White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

WikiLeaks and Journalism Lore

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“Publish and be damned,” the Duke of Wellington told the courtesan Harriette Wilson, who threatened to publish her memoirs and the general’s love letters in 1825.

In challenging Wilson, Wellington gave publishers and journalists a rallying cry that has echoed down through the years.

The irony here is that “The Iron Duke” despised anything that suggested opening up to the people: Indeed, he may have been history’s greatest elitist. He is not likely to have endorsed the dumping of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic dispatches by WikiLeaks. As for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Wellington would have had him shot or maybe hanged for better effect.

Yet Wellington gave us the famous phrase and, by and large, it has been a serviceable rule for journalism.

Publications that have sought to censor themselves—sometimes out of fear and sometimes for political reasons–have paid a high price. In 1963, the Profumo affair nearly brought down the Conservative government in Britain. But The Sunday Mirror, which had learned that war minister John Profumo was sharing the favors of party girl Christine Keeler with the Soviet naval attaché and a few others to boot, did not publish for fear of libel.

In the end the scandal leaked out in the United States, and the newspaper was left looking very foolish. I know because I was working at The Sunday Mirror.

A few decades later, Newsweek sat on the Monica Lewinsky–Bill Clinton scandal and inadvertently boosted the fortunes of Matt Drudge.

It is easier to say “publish and be damned” about a sex scandal involving public figures than it is about national and international security, which is orders of magnitude more difficult.

Is WikiLeaks doing a public service in posting hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic dispatches on the Web and hand-feeding them to five major news outlets, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian, El Pais and Der Spiegel? Or is Assange indulging in a grand act of anti-Americanism; or an equally grand act of anarchy, using technology in furtherance of the petulance of one man and his small band of accomplices?

The measurable good is slight. It may be confined to improved computer security, itself lamentable.

The evil is ongoing and will take years to assess. The first casualty will be in the quality of information sent back from the field to Washington: It will be sanitized, bowdlerized and neutered. The free exchange of ideas and information is compromised. The integrity of diplomatic communications cannot be taken for granted in future.

Then there are those, uncountable, whose careers have been ended because they were friends of the United States; not spies, just friends.

During the first tranche of leaks, I was the guest of the U.S. ambassador in a small country. Although there was nothing incriminating released, our diplomats suffered acute embarrassment and wondered how difficult their jobs would be in the future.

The gravest category is where vicious regimes are exploiting the WikiLeaks information to punish their political enemies: Step forward Robert Mugabe, the savage and ruthless dictator in Zimbabwe who has trashed what was once the jewel of Africa. He has seized on meetings his political rival Morgan Tsvangira held with Western diplomats, seeking to save the people of Zimbabwe from the predations of Mugabe and his band of thugs.

“Treason”cries Mugabe, who is as promiscuous in accusing his enemies of treason as was Henry VIII.

Relying on a law from the colonial days, Mugabe has appointed a commission to rule on whether Tsvangirai should face trial for treason. He has also picked out negative comments about Tsvangirai from various American dispatches to vilify his political rival.

Assange knew exactly what he was doing because he provided early access to his data dump to the five most reputable news organizations he knew. Clearly he hoped they would treat the material gingerly, as they have.

In so doing Assange must have hoped to mitigate the really serious damage–including executions–that might result from his mischief. He was hoping they would save him from the damnation of his own publishing.

It Won’t Be the End of the World, but $5 Gas Is Coming

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May 21, 2011, according to a loosely-organized apocalyptic Christian movement, will be the “end of days.”

On or about that same date, the price of oil in the United States will begin to climb to $4 a gallon, according to two savants of the oil industry.

The former is highly unlikely but the latter is very probable.

The escalation in the price of oil is predicted by the legendary oil man T. Boone Pickens, known for his financial acuity as well as his oil expertise, and John Hofmeister, who retired as president of Shell Oil Company, to sound the alarm about the rate of U.S. consumption of oil.

In an interview with a trade publication, Hofmeister predicted that oil would rise to $4 a gallon this year and to $5 a gallon in the election year 2012. Separately, Pickens—who has been leaning on Congress to enact an energy policy that would switch large trucks and other commercial vehicles from imported oil to domestic natural gas—predicts that oil currently selling for just over $90 a barrel will go to $120 a barrel, with a concomitant price per gallon of $4 or more.

The Obama administration appears to have been slow to grasp the political implications of an escalation in the price of oil. When asked about it, outgoing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs referred the questioner to the Department of Energy.

Not everyone is alarmed by the incipient rise in the price oil. Republicans, who are especially close to the oil industry and its Washington lobby, orchestrated by the American Petroleum Institute, think that a great deal of hay can be made while this particular sun shines. They plan to attack the administration for spending too many resources on alternative fuels, over-regulating the industry, and keeping too many federal lands away from oil prospecting. They also accuse the administration of being too frugal with its release of drilling areas in the Gulf of Mexico and on the two coasts, as well as Alaska.

The Republicans have unlikely bedfellows in their quest to politicize the price of oil. They are joined by environmentalists who have long believed that only high prices will break America’s passion for the automobile.

Environmentalists have long advocated European-style taxation to drive motorists out of their cars and onto buses and trains.

A third interest group that will take some pleasure in rising oil prices are those who are invested in alternatives such as ethanol, oil from algae and electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund is keeping an eye on the price of oil, according to Caroline Atkinson, director of external relations at the IMF. She told a Washington press briefing that the IMF is particularly concerned with food and other commodities that are directly affected by the price of oil.

Hofmeister, who now heads the non-profit Citizens for Affordable Energy that advocates energy development in all forms, believes that the United States could increase oil production from the current 7 million barrels per day to 10 million, half of its consumption. He told an interviewer from Platt’s, an energy publisher and broadcaster, that we were “essentially frittering at the edges of renewable energy, stifling production in hydrocarbon energy,” which he said could lead to blackouts, brownouts, gas lines and rationing.

There are already signs that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is planning a big push for hydrocarbon energy. An indication of this comes from Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), a one-time global-warming believer who has dropped that issue from his agenda. He is the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In periods of high gasoline prices in the past, presidents have found there is very little that they can do. Their options are to reduce the tax on gasoline, sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or the Naval Petroleum Reserve. President George W. Bush went a step further: He went to Saudi Arabia twice to ask the Saudis to increase their rate of production. Twice he came back empty-handed.

All of this would be good news for the oil producers and especially those troublesome players, Russia and Venezuela.

Of course, if you believe the human endeavor ends on May 21, better fuel the SUV and hit the road.

Blame Robert Burns for Your New Year’s Hangover

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Most of you are going to drink more than usual on New Year’s Eve. For some of you, it will be the only time you drink in the year; and for accomplished drinkers, well, get a designated driver — and maybe a designated bed. Things can get way out of hand.

Everything is stacked in favor of excess New Year’s Eve. Everything.

There is a long tradition of tippling. Maiden aunts hit the sherry; fathers start on dry martinis, and do not always make it to midnight; and French children are allowed watered wine. Trust the French. Also, you know you do not have to work the next day; although you will be ill-equipped to start implementing New Year’s resolutions, beyond the one never to do it again, or at least not for a year.

That other day of indulgence is March 17: St. Patrick’s Day. Do not confuse it with New Year’s Eve. St. Patrick’s is for the seasoned imbiber not the milquetoast church deacon who says “just the one” and after many flutes of Champagne, has to be helped home. New Year’s belongs not to the Irish but to the Scots. That old reprobate Robert Burns (1759-96) has his fingers all over it. He provided the excuse in a poem, “A Man’s A Man for A’ That” and a poem and song, “Auld Lang Syne.”

After the Act of Union in 1707, merging a reluctant Scotland and England, Scots’ pride was damaged and their language headed for extinction. It was the hard-living Burns who gave them back their pride and some sense of the specialness of Scotland and its clans.

The romantic movement Burns helped to ignite was further developed in the following century, when Queen Victoria showed a special affection for Scotland. She spent so much time at Balmoral Castle that some wag put a sign on Buckingham Palace which read, “This Desirable Residence To Let.” If the Queen, it is argued, had been as fond of Ireland, it might have remained part of the United Kingdom.

Be that as it may, the Scots influenced the English in the celebration of the New Year (known as Hogmanay in Scotland); and the Brits carried the Scots tradition around the world.

Of course, they also carried the native brew of Scotland around the world: Scotch became the ubiquitous drink it is today.

The Scots have always shown admirable dexterity is accommodating their Calvinism with strong drink and hard living. In the 37 years of his life, Burns fathered 14 children, nine of them with his wife, Jean; and he rivaled the English poet Lord Byron in his amorous imperialism. He also had an extravagant regard for New Year and for whisky.

The Scottish romantic movement — apart from getting us soused on Dec. 31– also spread the tradition of “first footing,” said to bring good luck to the first person across the threshold of a Scottish home on Jan. 1. Traditionally this was supposed to be a tall, dark person with a gift of salt. Standards have slipped, alas, and the revelers are more likely to be seeking more drink — or coming round the next day to apologize.

In the bad old days of journalism, when every day was a kind of New Year, there were theories aplenty of how to survive late into the night and to be in shape for the morrow. They include the following:

1. Do not mix grape and grain. Stick to wine or spirits. Do not turn yourself into a cocktail shaker.

2. Start the evening with a glass of milk, or swallow a pat of butter. This slows alcohol absorption.

3. No matter how bad you have been, take two aspirins before bed. That way you will not have to lie to God about reforming. He has heard it all before.

4. In the afternoon, read Dorothy Parker’s delicious short story, “You Were Perfectly Fine.” That should persuade you to see in the New Year in front of the television with a cup of herb tea. Cheers!

 

Flipping Out for Llewellyn King

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Patrick Ferise, a producer of P.O.T.U.S. on Sirius XM, often packs a Flip camera and shoots for the radio show’s Web site.

Last Friday, Ferise pulled out his Flip during “White House Chronicle” Host Llewellyn King’s weekly in-studio talk with P.O.T.U.S. Host Joe Mathieu. Ferise posted King’s remarks on immigration and the Dream Act, and President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, which drew these comments:

Omar Abhari: Love Llewellyn King. Can you please do me a favor though? Can you somehow get him to say “Ministry of Love” and “Big Brother” at some point during his next visit. A while back, instead of re-reading “1984,” I got the audio version and the narrator sounds just like him!

Kristina Slagle: Thanks for posting!!

Tina Flatt Winsett: How I wish everyone in and reporting on Washington was as straightforward and no-nonsense as Mr. King. Loved his very apt description of the C Street house and its inhabitants!

Herb Klinker: What a treasure is Llewellyn King! I could listen to him for hours. His perspective today on Obama and Afghanistan was particularly poignant!

CFS: How Snail Therapy Helped One Woman

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One of my favorite Christmas activities is to enjoy a really good French meal. I start my indulgence with a hearty serving of escargot, defying my cardiologist.

But this year, I have declared a one-man moratorium on the eating of snails. My gluttony has been impaired for this and other visits to Chez Indulgence by a slim but compelling volume that makes you think differently about that humble creature: the woodland snail.

It is also a book for Christmas: a feel-good book about a sick woman and a lowly creature of the forest floor. You never feel sorry for the writer, even in her distress, and you feel joyful about the snail. You bond with it.

The book is “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating” by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. It belongs in that category of books that, like tunes, becomes imprinted in your memory. Bailey’s book is not a work of fiction, and it is work of wonder.

Bailey, who used to be an outdoors woman and a professional gardener, was felled nearly 20 years ago by one of the least understood but most debilitating of diseases: chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

“From where I lay, all life was out of reach,” Bailey writes in her book.

Nothing much is known about the disease, which afflicts about 1 million Americans. But there is recent evidence that it may be caused by the retrovirus XMRV.

My own research into CFS and hundreds of e-mails I have received reveal that sufferers have bad years, worse years and years of some improvement. One writer told me, “We are the living dead.” Others thought they had recovered, but fell back into the lonely painful abyss.

In Bailey’s worst year, a visitor put a woodland snail into a pot of violets and presented it to her. It was a whimsical gesture, but it may have saved her life by giving her an interest beyond dreaming of the life that could no longer be hers. Sometimes she was so ill, Bailey reports, that she could not turn over in her bed, so she watched the snail.

Later, she placed it (they are hermaphrodites) in a better home—a terrarium where it could go about its complicated life, which included audibly chewing squares of paper. She got attached to it and learned about its habits; its use of slime to get around; and its ability to fertilize its own eggs and bring forth young—an amazing 118 little snails — in this predator-free space.

As Bailey’s health improved, she began to research snails in general and to study the work of the extraordinary naturalists of the 19th century, mostly British, including Charles Darwin. In the book, Bailey quotes some wonderful observations from this rich period for the natural sciences.

Like Bailey, the 19th-century naturalists depended more on what they saw in the field rather than study in the laboratory. They found, for example, that even hermaphrodites love to make love; and if one snail gets amorous with another, the proceedings are protracted. Who would have thought?

Bailey does not dwell on her disease, but on the snail. In fact, the nature of the disease is not revealed until the epilogue.

The book is not a lament of life’s abounding injustices, nor is it full of humbug about the human spirit. It is an adventurous, fascinating investigation of a snail that comforted inadvertently as it went about its slimy business, habitat attached.

Bailey is a beautiful writer of the simple English sentence and an artful storyteller.

This is a book for Christmas because it makes one feel very good. Merry Christmas to all the snails of the earth – people, too.

 

The Old-World Joys of Public Transportation

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PRAGUE — Just shout, “All aboard!” and I’m there.

I’m a sucker for trains, passionate about light rail, gooey over subways, sentimental about trams and trolley buses, and very content on a bus. I’m a public transport enthusiast.

This doesn’t mean, as critics of public conveyances so often believe, that one is against cars.

Let’s get this straight: One of the great wonders that make life in our times free and rich is the private car. It could be argued that they deserve constitutional protection, like guns and the media.

When you climb into your car, you are truly free. More, you are surrounded by your own stuff – the half-eaten candy bar, crushed tissue box, scattered CDs, and quite possibly the hair from your dog. Even if you are a neatnik, your car is your castle; safe, secure, mobile, cozy, cool.

Also, the car is a work of manufacturing genius — so much complexity for so little money. The first thing every poor person dreams of is a car.

I got my first old banger when I turned 16. It had many deficiencies, not the least of which were the mechanical brakes and the unsynchronized gear box.

But for me, it was the greatest vehicle ever built: Keep your Rollses, Bugattis and Cadillacs. I had a car. I was free. I was grown up. I was a person. The open road belonged to me, as did the toolbox, the lovers’ lane and wondrous bragging rights.

So what’s this about public transportation?

Sadly, in cities, cars have worn out their welcome. The miracle of the private car is now the urban curse. Too much of a good thing, you might say.

It’s not so much that cars are bad, but that they’re being used for the wrong things: getting to work, or getting around a crowded city.

Europe has its car problems, but it does better with alternatives. You need guts and patience to get around the Arc de Triumph in Paris by car, or to circumvent London on the M25.

In 2003 London restricted cars through a stiff congestion charge, which is now a model for the world — although Singapore did it 25 years earlier.

For political and historical reasons, Europe has the jump on public transportation. Not just its great cities but also its smaller towns, and even villages, have workable (extensive, seven days a week) public systems. A few American cities–notably Boston, New York and Chicago–offer integrated public transport, but more as a last resort than a first choice.

In Prague, I’ve just taken a tram from my Old Town hotel to the castle across the Vltava River and back. Easy and fun. User-friendly, too. I traveled here from Bratislava, Slovakia on a clean, comfortable train with a dining car and toilets in about four hours.

President Obama has talked a good line on infrastructure and green jobs. The two should be joined.

Infrastructure jobs mop up the construction-worker surplus and position our cities for a greener future. Particularly, electric buses need a new hearing. Overhead lines have worked well with two connections–like a big tuning fork–bringing in the power. But they have one weakness: They are not flexible and tend to disconnect on corners. Better engineering and batteries could solve that old bugaboo.

There is a liberal elite that worships Eurotransit, and in so doing infuriates the Europhobes.

In the 1980s, we were constantly looking to Japan to see what worked–until it didn’t work anymore. In all but air transportation, it’s time to look to Europe to see what works and improve on it. I doubt the practicality of high-speed rail in this country but electric vehicles in our cities, with fewer cars, would improve the quality of life as the air cleared.

What’s more, transportation infrastructure is an investment where the jobs stay here, and people experience the difference.


Euro Shows One Size Doesn’t Fit All

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When do two diametrically opposed economists, one from the left and one from the right, agree?

Answer: When the subject of the euro comes up.

So it is that Paul Krugman of Princeton and The New York Times and Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute and News Corp. both attacked the euro in the past week. They blamed the euro for the difficulty in bringing meaningful help to the troubled euro zone economies of Europe. And they were right.

Stelzer and other conservative economists had warned of the weakness of the one-size-fits-all nature of the common European currency at the time of its launch in 1999. Liberal economists, more sympathetic to the political dimension of the euro, were prepared to be satisfied with the assurances of fiscal probity from the aspirants to the new currency and endorsed it.

If everyone played by the rules and kept an orderly financial house, the euro would survive its structural weakness, reasoned the fathers of European monetary union. And for 11 years, it appeared that they were right.

The new currency found a lot of favor and hardened against the dollar early on. In some ways the euro was thought to be on its way to being a new reserve currency, supplanting the dollar. Iran and other oil producers with no love for the United States talked about designating the world oil trade in the euro rather than the dollar.

Now disaster, or near disaster. The weakness of a multi-country currency is revealed for all to see.

If Greece, Ireland, Spain, etc. still had their own currencies—the drachma, the punt and the peso—they would be able to deal with their financial crisis by devaluing their currencies, or by letting the markets do it for them. That would make their exports cheaper and their imports more expensive and leave the holders of their bonds intact, if a little poorer.

Likewise when the Irish currency was overheating during the property boom, interest rates could have been raised to cool things off. With a single currency there is no such flexibility, and each country must struggle with draconian internal economic measures that may take years to have an effect.

Why then did most countries of Europe, including this one, jump into a single currency when the potential for problems was known? Call it “The European Dream.”

I am writing this from Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. Here on the Great Hungarian Plain, where armies have crossed and recrossed for thousands of years, from the Romans to Napoleon, to Hitler to Russians, who put down the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968, it is easy to understand the evocation, “Never again.”

The first and definitive purpose of integration was to end internecine war in Europe, its curse for more than 2,000 years.

Yet from its inception as a customs union in the 1950s to the 27-nation behemoth it is today, integration has come slowly. People have different cultures, speak different languages and still have not found a common European persona.

Aspiring young politicians still head to their national assemblies rather than the European Parliament, and most people still have difficulty in accepting the dictates of the bureaucrats in Brussels.

So, to the European idealists, a common currency seemed something that would further bind Europe together. Now it appears to be something to be hated rather than embraced.

Yet no country in the common currency can afford to pull out in the current crisis. Krugman rightly points out that this would lead to a run on the banks, ahead of the devaluation that would certainly occur if any troubled country sought to revert to its old currency.

What is missing in the halls of economic philosophy is a way to make a single currency work equally for the weak and the strong. In the present crisis—and it is a severe one—that would be for strong Germany, France and Italy and for weak Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal to weather the current storm.

One size has yet to fit all. But one size is what the euro zone has to work with.

 

 

In Britain, Another Round of the Greatest Show on Earth

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I have history with royal weddings–just a little, but history nonetheless.

As Princess Margaret, sister to Queen Elizabeth II, was tying the knot on May 6, 1960, with Antony Armstrong-Jones, a photographer who would become Lord Snowdon, I was out finding “color” for a London news agency.

My assignment was to ride back and forth on a ferry across the River Thames.

From a phone box on one side of the river to a phone box on the other, I scurried, breathlessly reporting on every Union Jack and every wide-eyed child. That was a day on which Britain lost its head.

It was maybe the last great royal ceremony in which the British public was still wholly innocent.

Although some newspapers had debated the suitability of a mere photographer marrying into the royal family, the public had still wanted the fairy-tale wedding.

Yet it was Margaret, and this ill-fated union, that first lifted the veil on royal goings-on and began to show them not as a perfect family, but as a dysfunctional one, not as perfect servants of the people but as greedy, immoral, selfish and sometimes heartless.

This was fed by the new ability of the British tabloids to spy electronically on the royal persons.

But on that beautiful day, it seemed that everyone in Britain wanted to believe in the princess and her commoner husband.

Of course, the queen and her children would have to disappear for Margaret to become queen.

But she was in line for the throne, and that made her worthy of the national hallucination: The Glass Coach, drawn by matched pairs of horses; the impeccably choreographed regimental bands; the glorious color of noblemen’s robes; and–oh my, yes–the ladies’ hats.

And the queen herself, young and radiant with her consort, Prince Philip, always at her side, neither quite participant nor spectator.

It was the Greatest Show on Earth. Even Cecil B. DeMille could not have produced that kind of spectacle, centuries in the making.

When Prince William marries Kate Middleton–another commoner but not exactly a flower girl–it will be the greatest show on earth again.

Fortunately for the royal family, they are back in favor after three decades, when things sometimes looked bleak for the future of the monarchy.

Despite national misgivings about Prince Charles, eldest son of the queen, and his quirky ways, to say nothing of the way he treated his first wife, Princess Diana, and the way she reciprocated, Britain is again comfortable with its monarchy, even enthusiastic about it.

The thanks for this go to the queen–her long reign, her hard work and her perseverance. And partly to Diana, who in death refurbished the magic.

Queen Elizabeth is not a brilliant woman. She does not have wide interests outside of, well, being queen, a job that has no published job description–and her family.

She has tried to be more modern and to be a little closer to her subjects.

But it was probably the year in which the family seemed to have imploded that reinforced the queen’s relationship with her subjects.

Her Christmas message in 1992, in which she described the travails brought on by Charles and Diana and her humiliation as “annus horribilis,” meaning horrible year, brought forth a wave of sympathy.

It said that this remote lady, who had been their queen since before most of them were born, was not superwoman but a mum who made mistakes and who had children who misbehaved and disgraced the family.

This was a very human queen, set in authority over them, but still one of them.

Suddenly she was not aloof and imperious, but very human.

Not everyone in Britain is elated that Will and Kate are marrying after living together on and off for nearly a decade.

One social critic told me, “It sets a terrible example: Commitment-phobic men living with women and then mostly moving on. At least, they are marrying. But the hypocrisy of it! She will wear white, I suppose.”

And one day, she will wear a crown as Queen Consort of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and 15 other independent Commonwealth countries around the world.

Long live the Greatest Show on Earth: The British monarchy.

U.S. Is Losing Its Grip on World

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The patient is the United States and the diagnosis is “Asia shock.”

It is a psychological disease with physical symptoms and no known cure. However there are therapies, therapies of trade, diplomacy and fiscal restraint at home.

As President Barack Obama jets around Asia, he may be pondering not so much the economic power that lies East of Suez, but why it took so long to emerge. And why the patient is in denial.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Asia was for the taking by the European colonialists — and take they did.

Foremost was Britain with India, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya and coastal enclaves in China. France lumped together the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos as Indochina. Holland, of shrinking consequence in Europe, dominated Indonesia. Portugal had its toehold in Goa and Macao. Spain dallied in the Philippines till booted out by the emerging power of the time, the United States.

Only Japan was sufficiently organized to be a local maker of mischief in Korea and China.

Anyone looking at brawling, muscular, talented Asia today has to wonder why the giants slept for so long, and how the colonial masters were so ignorant of the abilities of their subservient people.

Blame Britain.

During the 15th century, the Age of Discovery, exploration was driven by a lust for wealth in the form of spices, gold and silver. Once the Industrial Revolution got under way in late 18th-century Britain, the lust was for those things, plus raw materials to feed the factories back home.

The newly wealthy in London and the south, with their lavish country homes, wanted tea and coffee, herbs and spices, tropical goodies and strange flavors from the East.

The colonial compact, more implied than written, was simple: They — the Asians — grow and harvest. We manufacture.

Britain, followed by its rivals, set the policy, and in so doing kept the Industrial Revolution at home; it was not for export.

While the British like to export their values, their justice systems and, in a tepid way, Anglicism (Catholic countries were more aggressive in the export of religion), they kept their industrial revolution at home, and all of the secondary industry it spawned. It was a black day in London when it was learned that industrial espionage had allowed cloth spinning technology to escape to America.

To this day, the remnants of the system which ruled that “value-added will take place in Britain” can be seen in British specialty products. The great tea-packing houses are still in Britain and Ireland, and some cottons are still woven in Britain.

No factories sprang up in the Asian empires of the European colonists. No technology transfer was encouraged, and the enormous latent talent of Asia went unrecognized.

Japan, without colonial influence, industrialized in the first part of the 20th century, but mostly to mechanize its military.

It was not until after World War II that Asia stirred and threw off the European constraints. Ironically, along with Japan, the British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore showed the way.

If China was slow to industrialize, it has charged ahead, changing the balance in the world and embracing the central truth of the Industrial Revolution: You need energy to make and move goods.

China has signed up developing countries’ oil and gas suppliers at a dizzying rate. In contrast, the United States looks at energy — the indispensable element in industrial output — through a post-industrial, environmental lens.

According to the World Nuclear Association, China has 39 nuclear reactors planned or on order and 23 under construction. There are 120 on its wish list. The United States has nine on its wish list and is building two.

The United States can no longer forge the large components for nuclear reactors. This can be done only in Japan; but China and South Korea are building new facilities to do the work. We dominate the world in two disparate arenas: defense technology and entertainment. In nearly all else, we are slipping.

It will be a shocking day for Americans when people from another country walk on the moon, where astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin trod in 1969. But it will happen.

 

If the House Defunds DOE, It Slashes Science

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There are those who claim the greatest line of advertising ever written was “Drink Coca-Cola.” Maybe. For me, it’s the much more recent “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

In this past election, the Republicans had the phrases and the ideas that stuck. The constant repetition of “small government” left the belief that it could be done and that it was achievable, no matter that government has grown under Republicans as much as it has under Democrats.

After the tumult, Dick Armey–he of the Tea Party persuasion–introduced us to a new political animal: the small-government conservative. These are the people, according to Armey, who will dictate the conservative agenda in the House and put the spokes in the Obama wheel.

This is my profile of this new class in American politics and on Main Street: They believe the government is too big and should be radically cut. They are sworn never to raise taxes. Never. So it is a good thing they believe in cutting government.

But there’s the rub. What are they going to cut and how?

With a Democratic president and Senate, the chainsaw-wielders have only one course of action: defunding the things they don’t like, which are mostly the things they don’t understand. The Tea Party types and those they have dragged to the right of the Republican Party say, for example, the Department of Energy must go because it makes no energy; besides, it was created by Jimmy Carter. Shudder!

In truth, the Energy Department was created the way presidents create departments; to show they are doing something when they don’t know what to do. That was the genesis of the Department of Homeland Security—a true monstrosity, created by George W. Bush to show that we were serious about terrorism—and of Carter’s Department of Education.

The Energy Department’s responsibilities include the long-range, high-risk research and development of energy technology, power marketing at the federal level, the promotion of energy conservation, oversight of the nuclear weapons program, regulatory programs, and the collection and analysis of energy data.

Day to day the department tries to clean up coal, perfect batteries, improve solar cells, tend the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in salt domes along the Gulf Coast, and operate the military Waste Isolation Pilot Project site in New Mexico. It ought to be doing as much for civilian wastes at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nixed that, along with about $10 billion of taxpayer money and some great engineering.

The Energy Department operates an extraordinary necklace of National Laboratories and Technology Centers, 20 of them.The jewels in this string are the weapons labs of Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore.

These labs comprise a unique national asset, unmatched anywhere. They employ thousands–that is right, thousands–of PhDs under a unique structure: The Energy Department sets the labs’ agendas and doles out the dollars, but they are operated by a mix of contractors from the university system of California to industrial firms.

To know the national laboratories is to love them. I know them.

The Energy Department has been burdened with indifferent and terrible secretaries, excepting these three: James Schlesinger, who created the department; Don Hodel, who served during the early years of the Reagan Administration; and Bill Richardson, who served under Bill Clinton.

One really wonders whether those who would hack away at the Energy

Department know what damage they would do. If the department were broken up, its functions would have to be housed elsewhere. Interior? Defense? NASA? EPA? No money would be saved.

The department is the largest science—especially physics–incubator on earth. It might more appropriately be called the Department of Science. Sure it could be better run; much duplication could be eliminated. But why close down our primary science institution?

Along with “small government,” there is a also a cry for more “math and science.” Woodsmen spare that department; prune but do not chop it down.