Saturday, Apr 29, 2006 at 11:56 PM
Flight 93 lessons

The much-anticipated movie, “Flight 93,” is a riveting account of the events of 9/11 centering around the heroic actions of passengers aboard the only plane that did not make its target.

The film is a dispassionate telling of that day’s searing events. There is, for example, no context provided as to why the four hijackers aboard Flight 93 commit the horrific acts they do. Osama bin Laden is never mentioned. Neither is George Bush.

But the movie does not pull all its punches.

The bungling, snail-like response of U.S. government bureaucracies from the FAA to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) are repeatedly on display. And they are a reminder that FEMA is not the only government bureaucracy that is slow to react in crisis. Though Democrats and the press have transparently tried to make FEMA’s Katrina response a symbol of the Bush Administration, “Flight 93” is evidence that “quick response government” is an oxymoron (SNAFU, the derisive acronym describing government bureaucracy, dates to WW2).

Indeed, the questions about government inaction on 9/11 are remarkably similar to those of Katrina: Why did the agencies (FAA and Air Force) not communicate better? Why was NORAD so slow to react (it took 44 minutes to scramble fighters to intercept the Pentagon bound plane)? Why, despite prior simulations of terrorists using planes as missiles, did NORAD appear clueless about what to do?

And there is this question: Why, given repeated examples of government ineptness, do politicians today continue to advocate more federal control over our energy production, automotive industry, and health care system?

In Houston, former executives of Enron are on trial for defrauding investors of billions of dollars in their stock portfolios, while in Washington, DC, politicians are proposing to cap Big Oil company profits because they are successfully earning money for investors' stock portfolios.

If Senator Levin & Co throw a wrench into Exxon profits, will they be put on trial for defrauding investors?

ExxonMobil this morning posted a first-quarter profit of seven percent - good news that promptly provoked howls of protest from political demagogues and their usual media parrots. CBS News observed ExxonMobil’s earnings, then acidly remarked that “it claimed they weren’t windfall profits.” Thanks to good earnings, ExxonMobil stock price is nearly double what is was four years ago (60 vs. 35) when oil companies were losing billions. Does Washington prefer that scenario?

CBS might better spend its time actually explaining to its viewers why gas prices are so high. They will find that – Chinese demand and international crises in Iran and Venezuela aside – it is the Senator Levins of the world that are at the root of the problem. In addition to federal regulations that severely restrict oil exploration in the U.S., new ethanol rules – passed just last year in the federal energy bill - are causing serious supply disruptions in the U.S., driving up the price of gas an estimated 15 percent.

Americans paying $3 a gallon at the pump should be looking out for Big Government, not cursing Big Oil.

On March 1, Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of The New York Times and best-selling author of “The World is Flat” argued that America should pass a huge gas tax to “end our oil addiction” and address global warming.

Any takers?

No? Seems New York Times writers might be out of touch with the prevailing mood in America about gas prices (along with senators like John Kerry, who once proposed a 50-cent per gallon tax increase). What a surprise. Still, Mr. Fiedman persists that in “the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, Americans not only know that our oil addiction is really bad for us, but they would be willing to accept a gasoline tax.”

Okaaaay, we’ll play along, Tom.

He writes that if gas were only “taxed to the $3.50-to-$4-per-gallon range -- and kept there -- large numbers of Americans would plug-in hybrid cars that run on biofuels like ethanol.”

Aw, heck, Tom, don’t stop there - let’s tax gas to $5.50 a gallon! That’s what European states like Germany have done and they’re all driving alternative fuel cars, right?

Wrong.

Fifty-five percent of them are driving fossil-fueled diesel cars (the rest gas) because they get better mileage than the vastly-overrated hybrids and oil is much more efficient than ethanol. So the Germans get twice the cost at the pump – with none of the benefits Tom promises.

Oh, yes, and the Germans are still 90- percent dependent on foreign oil.

Both statements are demonstrably untrue.

Polls of climate scientists have never shown a consensus on global warming, and strongly-skeptical statements about man-made global warming just this week by two of the field’s top scientists, Willie Soon of Harvard and MIT’s Richard Lindzen, contradict CNN’s journalists.



And melting icecaps? The evidence is actually 180 degrees opposite that of "Cooper 360" (echoed by most MSM). According to studies in Nature, Science, and other publications these last few years, Antarctica is growing and its ice thickening.

But when you have lost the scientific argument, there is nothing left but fear. Here’s The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof (this year’s Pulitzer winner for commentary, which makes one doubt the Pulitzer’s standards for quality):

“It's a dark and stormy night, and deep within the ocean the muddy bottom begins to stir. Giant squids flee in horror as reservoirs of methane frozen at the bottom of the ocean begin to thaw, releasing bubbles that rise to the surface. Soon the ocean surface is churning and burping gas like a billion overfed infants, transforming the composition of our atmosphere. That's a scene from a new horror movie I'm envisioning, called '’Killer Ocean.'’”

Scary, huh? So were the stories about falling off a flat earth.

But as the Religious Left grows more strident in its language about our moral imperative to curb global warming (“But is it moral not to try?” preached Time, April 3), similar attacks are inevitable.

What is also inevitable, sadly, are politicians’ cynical attempts to mouth the Green dogma rather than educate Americans on the essential role cheap energy plays in our prosperity.

This Earth Day, President Bush will burn 40,000 gallons of fossil fuel aboard Air Force One to make a round-trip flight to Sacramento to celebrate California’s Fuel Cell Partnership and decry our “addiction to oil.”



Compounding the irony, Bush’s Saturday visit will follow a stop in Santa Jose – just up the road from vandalized Santa Cruz – where he will highlight Cisco Systems as an example of America’s leadership in high technology. Cisco, a manufacturer of Internet routers, has been critical to the explosion of Internet traffic in America. Much of that traffic flows through computer “server farms” in California. The energy demands of those server farms were a major cause of California’s rolling blackouts in 2001.

And those energy blackouts were a direct result of California’s opposition to new state power generation out of fear that it would lead to imagined environmental disasters like global warming.

Raptures New Yorker editor David Remnick: “(Truth) is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hell-bent path to global suicide.” Two weeks ago, Time magazine took to the pulpit to whip up the congregation with a sermon title that would make Chicken Little blush: “Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever. Land Is Being Devastated By Drought. Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities. By Any Measure, Earth Is At The Tipping Point. The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame. Why the crisis hit so soon--and what we can do about it.” (Whew! Somehow that fit in the church bulletin.)



What we can do about it, declares Time (a news magazine before converting to the faith), is take the baby step of recognizing the Kyoto Treaty and “cutting greenhouse-gas emissions (carbon dioxide) to 7 percent below 1990 levels over the next six years.”

Simple, yes? But like all simple answers, reality is a bit more complicated.

Since the Department of Energy began keeping CO2 emission records in 1949, U.S. output of that industrial gas has been cut only three times: During the recessions of 1981-82, 1990-91, and – most recently – 2000-2001. The 1981-82 recession - the deepest since the Great Depression - reduced CO2 emissions by 8 percent. Emissions dropped by 0.8 precent in 2001 (a recession Michigan is still struggling to shake).

To meet Time’s goal – and it’s only a first step, they admit – the U.S. would have to cut its emissions by 30 percent in the next six years. Talk about a hell-bent path to suicide. Economic suicide, that is.

Carbon dioxide, you see, is synonymous with economic growth – which is something that High Priest Gore and his twice-elected President Bill “It’s the economy, stupid” Clinton understood well. During the eight boom years of their presidency, U.S. CO2 emissions increased 12 percent.

In fact, the real cover-up right now is in the mainstream media.

It is a cover-up of evidence from recently-released, captured Iraqi documents that confirms Saddam Hussein had direct ties to terrorism. Here’s a snapshot:

- Foreign Affairs magazine reports Saddam ordered his fanatical Fedayeen forces to conduct “special operations, assassinations, bombings, for London, Iran, and Kurdistan.” Says the magazine: “Preparations for ‘Blessed July,’ a regime-directed wave of ‘martyrdom’ operations against targets in the West were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion.”

- In congressional testimony April 6, General Anthony Cucolo presented official Iraqi documents that reveal since 1994, the Fedayeen opened its own paramilitary training camps for volunteers, graduating more than 7,200 Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, and Syria.

- ABC News (the only MSM media source to report on the records) found that Saddam met with Osama bin Laden in 1995 to coordinate anti-Saudi Arabia broadcasts and “joint operations against foreign forces.”

- The Weekly Standard cites documents that Taliban recruiters in Baghdad in 1994 and 1998 recruited Iraqis to blow up foreign embassies in Pakistan.

- Another Standard report uncovers Baathist financing of Abu Sayyaf, Al Qaida’s Philippine branch.

None of this activity should be a surprise given Saddam’s known financial support of anti-Israel terrorism and PLO training camps near Baghdad. But (ABC aside) the mainstream press has reported not a word of it.

Why? Perhaps because it does not fit the leftist narrative that Iraq has nothing to do with the War on Terror. To report the news risks legitimizing the Iraq war.

The ridiculously complicated tax code aside, Americans might feel better about filing their tax returns this Saturday if they knew Washington was being fiscally prudent with their money.

Alas, all evidence is otherwise.

The 2005 Michigan Pork Barrel Spending Award goes hands down to Debbie Stabenow’s hefty $100 million study – just a study! – of whether to build a mass transit system between Ann Arbor and Detroit. Given population densities along the I-94 corrider, the concept is outrageous on its face, but, hey, it isn’t her money.

Pork spending boondoggles have become so common, most don’t even get headlines. Take this item, buried in the papers yesterday. Detroit’s Gateway Bridge – perhaps better known as McBridge – is that blue eyesore on I-94 built as a greeting for Super Bowl visitors. The Super Bowl has come and gone, but we’re stuck with this monstrosity.

Guess who paid for it. That’s right – you. Sure, a private civic group called the Detroit Regional Gateways Advisory Council raised $1.5 mil, but that didn’t cover the whole nut. The remaining $700,000 came from federal money just lying around for “beautification.”

Oink oink.

Sniffin’ the fumes of high gas prices is making some folks nuts.

First, our fading president declares us “addicted to oil.” (Right. And we’re also “addicted to water” until we find something that works better in our faucets).

Now Big Oil itself is getting tipsy. In a recent ad campaign, Exxon-Mobil took a drunken swing at the auto industry to score

political points, contending that high oil prices are the fault of car companies because they aren’t “improving engines and fuels to achieve maximum efficiency. The best available science suggests a 50 percent improvement in the (gasoline) engine may be achievable.”

This is patent nonsense, of course. The gas engine has made relentless efficiency strides. For example, even as it has met market demands for more room and power (ten percent gains in each), Honda’s 2006 Accord still gets ten percent better fuel economy from its four-cylinder engine than just ten years ago.

But Exxon-Mobil’s patronizing tone is the least of it. What the company is essentially arguing is that the world is using too much of its product! Huh? What kind of company wants folks to use LESS of what it makes?

The only other industry that comes to mind is the tobacco industry which routinely runs “public service” campaigns urging folks not to smoke. It is a political somersault Big Tobacco is willing to make, however, because state governments have guaranteed it monopoly status thanks to a costly 1998 tobacco settlement that precludes future competition by making market entry prohibitively expensive.

Big Oil enjoys no such government guarantee. As an industry that enjoys less than average profits (even in 2005, a good year, its 9 percent profit margin is only 1 point above the S&P average), Big Oil can ill-afford the govt. regulation its politically-correct preening invites. Exxon-Mobil might better serve the public interest by pointing out that govt. regulations (resulting in lack of oil refineries, ethanol mandates) are driving up the cost of gas.

But it’s hard to defend an industry that seems so intent on hanging itself.

Not to be outdone by Exxon-Mobil’s Green demagoguery blaming auto companies for high gas prices, Chrysler did its own imitation of Ralph Nader this week by alleging that “Big Oil would rather fill the pockets of its executives and shareholders, rather than spend sufficient amounts to reduce the price of fuel.”

But in its fever to one-up Exxon-Mobil as PC Company of the Month, Chrysler reveals a company unsure of its business mission.

According to Chrysler’s spokesman: “The auto industry is doing its job by building cleaner, leaner, more efficient vehicles and embracing alternatives to gasoline such as biodiesel and ethanol and hybrids. So while we make these important and responsible strides despite the challenges of global competition and legacy costs, Big Oil is swimming in profits.”

Chrysler’s stockholders might be interested to note that Chrysler no longer values profits, but instead sees its business mission as taking “responsible strides” to “embracing alternatives like biodiesel and ethanol” that have no viable market today.

That’s not the auto industry’s job. Its job is to make products its customers want so that its stockholders will be “swimming in profits.”

Toyota, on the other hand, has the industry’s highest auto market capitalization because of a relentless focus on making reliable cars for its customers. Last year, for example, I took my 1997 Dodge Neon in for a transmission overhaul. The mechanic told me: “We make our living repairing transmissions from Fords and particularly Chryslers. We never see a Toyota or Honda in here.”

As a result, Toyota has doubled its US market share in ten years to 14 percent as Chrysler has remained flat at 13.

Sounds like Toyota is doing its job.