President Barack Obama href=”http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43706.html”>famously believes that all of his policies are support by the “facts and science” while opposition to his policies comes only from “fear and frustration.” As The Washington Post documented twice this weekend, that is just plain false. First Charles Lane href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/29/AR2010102905959.html”>reports:

The Obama Energy Department has suggested that, with the help of federal money, manufacturers can ramp up mass production and bring the price of electric-car battery packs down 70 percent by 2014 – thus rendering the cars more affordable.

But J.D. Power is skeptical. “Declines of any real significance are not anticipated during the next 5 years,” the report notes, adding that “the disposal of depleted battery packs presents yet another environmental challenge.” id=”more-45888″>

Nor are industry and government close to resolving the lack of a nationwide recharging infrastructure – or the vehicles’ poor performance in cold weather or on hilly terrain.

Fine print on the Volt ad promises just “25-50 miles of electric driving in moderate conditions.” Translation: Much of the time the car will be running on gas, just like ones that cost far, far less than the four-seat Volt’s price of $ 33,500 (after a $ 7,500 federal tax credit).

In short, the Obama administration’s commitment of $ 5 billion in loans and grants for electric cars is the biggest taxpayer rip-off since corn-based ethanol. It benefits no one but a few well-to-do car buyers and politically connected companies. Any “green” jobs these rent-seeking firms create will vanish when consumers reject their products and/or the subsidies cease.

And on President Obama’s high speed rail policies, Robert Samuelson href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/31/AR2010103104260.html”>wrote:

Let’s suppose that the Obama administration gets its wish to build high-speed rail systems in 13 urban corridors. The administration has already committed $ 10.5 billion, and that’s just a token down payment. California wants about $ 19 billion for an 800-mile track from Anaheim to San Francisco. Constructing all 13 corridors could easily approach $ 200 billion. Most (or all) of that would have to come from government at some level. What would we get for this huge investment?

Not much. Here’s what we wouldn’t get: any meaningful reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, air travel, oil consumption or imports. Nada, zip. If you can do fourth-grade math, you can understand why.

Lane and Samuelson are both dead on. This administration’s environmental policies have nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. You can read Heritage research on the electric car sinkhole href=”http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/02/Another-Bailout-for-Detroit-Automakers-Would-Throw-Good-Money-After-Bad”>hear and on the high speed rail boondoggle href=”http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/03/America-s-Coming-High-Speed-Rail-Financial-Disaster”>here.

The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

A missing check mark

This sample ballot from the Beaver County (Penn.) Democratic Party does seem to be missing something.

Namely: The nominee for Senate.

The county is steel country, a place where Bob Casey won by 25 points with the strong support of the conservative Democrats who seem less enthused this year.

Ben Smith’s Blog

Missing the college kids

A close observer of the ’08 campaign emails regarding the decline in registration of young voters from 2008, which is hardly a surprise:

Obviously there was more youth enthusiasm in 2008 than 2010, but one of the biggest differences between 2008 and 2010 is that Obama ran a primary campaign in nearly every single state in 2008. He could register college voters in the spring, and if not, he’d developed the campus infrastructure to carry out effective voter registration during the general election.

The problem with colleges is that there’s always turnover. Let’s say you develop relationships with the college Democrats in the 2008 primary season. Many of those folks are gone by the Fall of 2008, and they’re certainly gone by Fall 2010. Campus engagement will always be tough, and it will always be driven by current events, not past partisan loyalties. It’s hard to maintain those relationships and infrastructure over time. Ideally, Obama would hire an organizer (with alumni ties) for every major college in important states (25k+ students), stoke relationships with college Democrats, and pick up 1,000+ low hanging votes every election at all of these major colleges.

One thing that’s interesting is that many polls in 2008 showed that while Obama excelled with the 18-29 crowd, his numbers were ABSURD with the 13-18 crowd (something like 70-80%). Despite what he may have hoped, those folks aren’t rushing to register and participate as far as I can tell. Remember how people’s children made them endorse Obama?

Ben Smith’s Blog

Former JCS Chair Says Nuclear Launch Codes Went Missing For Months

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton says in a new book that a crucial part of the system of checks used to order a nuclear launch went missing for months during the Clinton Administration:

A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says in a new book that while Bill Clinton was in the White House, a key component of the president’s nuclear launch protocol went missing.

“The codes were actually missing for months. This is a big deal,” says General Hugh Shelton. “We dodged a silver bullet.”

In his book “Without Hesitation,” the retired Army general writes, “Even though movies may show the President wearing these codes around his neck, it’s pretty standard that they are safeguarded by one of his aides, but that aide sticks with him like glue.” He adds that President Clinton “assumed, I’m sure, that the aide had them like he was supposed to.”

What apparently was missing was a card with code numbers on it that allows the president to access a briefcase — called the “football” and kept by an aide always near the president — containing instructions for launching a nuclear attack.

Once a month, Defense Department officials conduct an in-person verification to make sure the president has the right codes. At least twice in a row, Shelton writes, a White House aide told the Pentagon checker that the president was in a meeting but gave a verbal assurance that the codes were with him.

Then one month around the year 2000, according to Shelton, when the time came to replace the codes with a new set, “the president’s aide said neither he nor the president had the codes — they had completely disappeared.”

The codes are only one part of  the system needed to order a launch so, even if someone had somehow gotten their hands on the codes they likely wouldn’t have been able to do anything with them. On the other hand, without the codes, it would have been difficult for President Clinton to order a launch if he wanted to:

Shelton says the president was given new codes within minutes when the previous codes could not be found, and the procedures have since been changed, so that the Pentagon aide who carries out the monthly check is required to wait at the White House until he or she can visually confirm the codes are in the possession of the president or an aide who is with him.

I would hope they’ve been changed.

Outside the Beltway

War: The Missing Campaign Issue

Tom Brokaw notices something peculiar about the campaign debates:

IN what promises to be the most contentious midterm election since 1994, there is no shortage of passion about big issues facing the country: the place and nature of the federal government in America’s future; public debt; jobs; health care; the influence of special interests; and the role of populist movements like the Tea Party.

In nearly every Congressional and Senate race, these are the issues that explode into attack ads, score points in debates and light up cable talk shows. In poll after poll, these are the issues that voters say are most important to them this year.

Notice anything missing on the campaign landscape?

How about war? The United States is now in its ninth year of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, the longest wars in American history. Almost 5,000 men and women have been killed. More than 30,000 have been wounded, some so gravely they’re returning home to become, effectively, wards of their families and communities.

In those nine years, the United States has spent more than $ 1 trillion on combat operations and other parts of the war effort, including foreign aid, reconstruction projects, embassy costs and veterans’ health care. And the end is not in sight.

So why aren’t the wars and their human and economic consequences front and center in this campaign, right up there with jobs and taxes?

The answer is very likely that the vast majority of Americans wake up every day worrying, with good reason, about their economic security, but they can opt out of the call to arms. Unless they are enlisted in the armed services — or have a family member who has stepped forward — nothing much is asked of them in the war effort.

There’s a large grain of truth to that.  If there were still a military draft, as we had in Vietnam, there would doubtless be more anger about the wars.

Then again, the Iraq War was a significant issue in the 2008 campaign.  One could argue that Barack Obama’s having been opposed to the war from the start was the main programmatic issue separating him from the other major candidates for the Democratic nomination and was the thing that him the nominee rather than Hillary Clinton.   And, while it wasn’t the key issue in the general election — by then the economic crisis was afoot — John McCain’s statement that it would be fine if we were still in Iraq in a thousand years (so long as we weren’t taking any more casualties than the troops that have been in South Korea for the past half century) didn’t go over too well, as you may recall.

No, the reasons that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t major issues this time around is that the economy is more important to most Americans and there’s a rough bipartisan consensus on these wars.   Iraq has gone away as a point of contention because the rate of American casualties has fallen to next to nothing and everyone senses that we’re on our way out with our heads held up relatively high.   And, oddly, the elites of both parties both seem to think that we’re unlikely to win in Afghanistan but that we need to give it one more heroic effort before conceding that point.   If we’re not either “winning” there or clearly on our way out by early 2012, it’ll certainly be a big issue in that campaign.

Outside the Beltway

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