White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

In Search of the Real Elizabeth Warren

September 10, 2015 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

By Llewellyn King

I went to Boston this week in pursuit of the real Elizabeth Warren. You see, I don’t think the whole story of Warren comes across on television where she can seem overstated, too passionate about everyday things to be taken seriously.

Like others, I’ve wondered why the progressives are so enamored of her. Suffolk University, mostly known for its authoritative polls, gave her platform as part of an ongoing series of public events in conjunction with The Boston Globe. But whether the dearest hopes of the progressives will be fulfilled, or whether the senior senator from Massachusetts has reached her political apogee is unclear.

What I did find is that Warren has star power. She is a natural at the podium, and revels in it. At least she did at Suffolk, where the cognoscenti came out to roar their affirmation every time she threw them some red meat, which she did often.

Here’s a sampling:

On student loans: “The U.S. government is charging too much interest on student loans. It shouldn’t be making money on the backs of students.”

On the U.S. Senate: “It was rigged and is rigged [by lobbyists and money in politics]. The wind only blows in one direction in Washington … to make sure that the rich have power and remain in power.”

Warren’s questioner, Globe political reporter Joshua Miller, led her through the predictable obstacle course of whether she was angling to be the vice presidential candidate, if Joe Biden runs and becomes the Democratic nominee. She waffled on this question, as one expected, admitting to long talks about policy with Biden and declaring herself prepared to talk policy with anyone. She said the subject of the vice presidency might have come up.

Short answer, in my interpretation: She would join the ticket in a heartbeat. This isn’t only for reasons of ambition — of which she has demonstrated plenty, from her odyssey through law schools, until she found a perch at Harvard as a full professor — but also age.

Warren is 66 years old and although her demeanor and appearance are of a much younger woman, the math is awkward. There are those in the Democratic Party who say she needs a full term in the Senate to get some legislative experience and to fulfill the commitment of her first elected office. But eight years from now, she’ll probably be judged as too old to run for president.

Clearly Warren didn’t fancy the punishment, and probable futility, of a run against Hillary Clinton. But the vice presidency might suit her extraordinarily well, given Biden’s age of 72.

Warren has stage presence; she fills a room. She is funny, notwithstanding that you can be too witty in national politics, as with failed presidential aspirants Mo Udall and Bob Dole. She reminds me of those relentlessly upbeat mothers, who were always on-call to fix things in the children’s books of my youth.

Although Warren comes from a working-class background, years of success at the best schools has left her with the patina of someone from the comfortable classes; someone for whom things work out in life. She counters this by stressing the plight of the middle class, the decline in real wages and her won passion for fast food and beer — light beer, of course.

Warren’s father was janitor in Oklahoma who suffered from heart disease and her mother worked for the Sears catalog. The young Elizabeth did her bit for the family income by waitressing.

However, it’s hard to imagine her at home at a union fish fry. My feeling is  that she’d be more comfortable — the life of the party, in fact — at a yacht club.

Progressives yearn for Warren and she speaks to their issues: the lack of Wall Street regulation and federal medical research dollars, and the need for gun control, student loan reform, equal pay for equal work, and government contracting reform.

Less dour than Bernie Sanders, and less extreme, it’s no wonder they long for her to occupy high office; she’s a classic, untrammeled liberal.

All in all, I’d like to go to a party where Warren is the host: the kind where they serve more than light beer.  — For InsideSources.com.

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: 2016 presidential election, Boston, Democrats, Harvard University, Hillary Clinton, Joshua Miller, King Commentary, Massachusetts, medical research, National Institutes of Health, NIH, progressives, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Social Security, student loans, Suffolk University, The Boston Globe, U.S. Senate, Vermont, Vice President Joe Biden, Wall Street

Nuclear Teetering on the Economic Precipice

December 12, 2014 by Llewellyn King 8 Comments

This will be a bleak Christmas for the small Vermont community of Vernon. It is losing its economic mainstay. The owner of its proud, midsize nuclear plant, which has sustained the community for 42 years, Entergy, is closing the plant. Next year the only people working at the plant will be those shuttering it, taking out its fuel, securing it and beginning the process of turning it into a kind of tomb, a burial place for the hopes of a small town.

What may be a tragedy for Vernon may also be a harbinger of a larger, multilayered tragedy for the United States.

Nuclear – Big Green – is one of the most potent tools we have in our battle to clean the air and arrest or ameliorate climate change over time. I've named it Big Green because that is what it is: Nuclear power plants produce huge quantities of absolutely carbon-free electricity.

But many nuclear plants are in danger of being closed. Next year, for the first time in decades, there will be fewer than 100 making electricity. The principal culprit: cheap natural gas.

In today’s market, nuclear is not always the lowest-cost producer. Electricity was deregulated in much of the country in the 1990s, and today electricity is sold at the lowest cost, unless it is designated as “renewable” — effectively wind and solar, whose use is often mandated by a “renewable portfolio standard,” which varies from state to state.

Nuclear falls into the crevasse, which bedevils so much planning in markets, that favors the short term over the long term.

Today’s nuclear power plants operate with extraordinary efficiency, day in day out for decades, for 60 or more years with license extensions and with outages only for refueling. They were built for a market where long-lived, fixed-cost supplies were rolled in with those of variable cost. Social utility was a factor.

For 20 years nuclear might be the cheapest electricity. Then for another 20 years, coal or some other fuel might win the price war. But that old paradigm is shattered and nuclear, in some markets, is no longer the cheapest fuel — and it may be quite few years before it is again.

Markets are great equalizers, but they're also cruel exterminators. Nuclear power plants need to run full-out all the time. They can’t be revved up for peak load in the afternoon and idled in the night. Nuclear plants make power 24/7.

Nowadays, solar makes power at given times of day and wind, by its very nature, varies in its ability to make power. Natural gas is cheap and for now abundant, and its turbines can follow electric demand. It will probably have a price edge for 20 years until supply tightens. The American Petroleum Institute won't give a calculation of future supply, saying that the supply depends on future technology and government regulation.

Natural gas burns cleaner than coal, and is favored over coal for that reason. But it still pumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, though just about half of the assault on the atmosphere of coal.

The fate of nuclear depends on whether the supporters of Big Green can convince politicians that it has enough social value to mitigate its temporary price disadvantage against gas.

China and India are very mindful of the environmental superiority of nuclear. China has 22 power plants operating, 26 under construction, and more about to start construction. If there is validity to the recent agreement between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama, it is because China is worried about its own choking pollution and a fear of climate change on its long coastline, as well as its ever-increasing need for electricity.

Five nuclear power plants, if you count Vermont Yankee, will have closed this year, and five more are under construction in Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia. After that the new plant pipeline is empty, but the number of plants in danger is growing. Even the mighty Exelon, the largest nuclear operator, is talking about closing three plants, and pessimists say as many as 15 plants could go in the next few years.

I'd note that the decisions now being made on nuclear closures are being made on economic grounds, not any of the controversies that have attended nuclear over the years. 

Current and temporary market conditions are dictating environmental and energy policy. Money is more important than climate, for now. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Big Green, China, electricity, Georgia, King Commentary, natural gas, nuclear, President Obama, renewables, solar, South Carolina, Tennessee, United States, Vermont, Vermont Yankee, Vernon VT, wind, Xi Jinping

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
The Next Big Thing for Electricity — the Virtual Power Plant

The Next Big Thing for Electricity — the Virtual Power Plant

Llewellyn King

America’s electric utilities are undergoing a revolution — one which is quiet but profound. Since Thomas Edison set the ball rolling, utilities have made electricity in a central station and dispatched it down a line to a consumer. It was a simple transaction: manufacture, transport, sell. Now it is getting more sophisticated. So long a […]

Irish Exceptionalism — They Punch Above Their Weight

Irish Exceptionalism — They Punch Above Their Weight

Llewellyn King

The Irish punch above their weight. That is why worldwide, on March 17, people who don’t have a platelet of Irish blood and who have never thought of visiting the island of Ireland joyously celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. That day may or may not have been when St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint, died in the 5th century. The […]

If We Keep Electrifying, We Will Run Out of Power

If We Keep Electrifying, We Will Run Out of Power

Llewellyn King

If you punch in “outage map” in a search engine, you will get a series of maps, ranging from the entire country to state by state and even smaller jurisdictions. These maps show electrical outages across the United States and territories, and they are within 10 minutes of actual time. The data come from the […]

For Some, Scotland Is Independent — Gloriously So

For Some, Scotland Is Independent — Gloriously So

Llewellyn King

I am an unabashed lover of Scotland and all things Scottish. It is different from England, gloriously so. Although bound to its big neighbor under the Act of Union of 1707, Scotland has remained a very separate place. It has its own legal system with demanding rules of evidence that require two witnesses, or lines […]

Copyright © 2023 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in