Gregg Easterbrook

If an election is coming, that means each side needs a bogeyman. The Republicans have chosen first, and theirs is the Environmental Protection Agency. Michele Bachman calls the EPA “the job-killing organization of America,” promising to “padlock” its doors. Tea Party leader Eric Cantor says environmental rules are “job-destroying”. Texas Gov. Rick Perry says he “prays daily” for the EPA to be restricted.

Soon Democrats will choose their bogeyman – The Rich are the current frontrunner.

Elections often are dominated by bogeymen – Republicans claim Democrats don’t care about national defense, Democrats claim Republicans want to eliminate Social Security, that sort of nonsense. Environmental bogeymen are appealing to some factions because the issue involves regulatory arcana that hardly anyone understands, and because environmental subjects are poorly reported in the mainstream media.

What’s maddening about the politics of the environment is that both sides consistently assert things that aren’t even close to true. The right claims that environmental regulations hurt the economy – data show the reverse. The left claims the environment is dying – data show the reverse.

Consider environmental rules and the economy. From 1980 to the beginning of the 2008 recession, the very period in which environmental regulations went from few to many, the U.S. GDP rose 124 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. Most of that period was gangbusters for growth and employment. If environmental regulations are “job destroying,” the economy has a funny way of showing it.

Besides coexisting with economic growth, environmental regulation has had other positive impacts. The dramatic decline in air pollution (down 57 percent from 1980 to 2009), coupled to dramatic decline in releases of toxic compounds (down 74 percent since 1980) are central factors in the rebound of American cities.

New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Pittsburgh – economic activity in these places has soared, population rebounded, and real estate values have risen (even taking into account the post-2008 slump) in part because big cities are far cleaner and more desirable than a generation ago. In the 1970s, Los Angeles averaged more than 100 “stage one” smog alerts per year: recently Los Angeles went seven consecutive years without any stage one alert. If smog and toxic emissions had continued rising at the pre-EPA pace, major U.S. cities might have become nearly uninhabitable. Instead big cities have replaced smokestack industry as the engines of 21st century economic growth – see the book The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida.

Yet Republicans claim environmental regulations are bad for the economy because many voters believe it. Same goes for when Democrats claim Republicans want to end Social Security — it’s because many voters actually believe it.

Lowest-common-denominator politics aside, what’s maddening about Republicans making the EPA a bogeyman is that it denies a great American success story. Using innovation and ingenuity, U.S. businesses found ways to cut pollution without harming economic expansion — and not by offshoring either: petrochemical production inside the United States has increased during the period of toxic-emission decline.

America has every right to boast of leading the world in environmental protection. Some of the credit belongs with Republicans – Richard Nixon for founding the EPA, the elder president George Bush for backing a push against acid rain. But in order to say that environmental protection worked, candidates such as Bachmann and Perry would need to admit that federal rules can bring benefits to society. Many on the contemporary right just can’t bring themselves to say this. So Bachmann, Perry and others on the right talk down the United States, ignoring success while crying wolf about problems that don’t even exist.

On the left, the mental blinders are just as bad. All forms of air pollution except greenhouse gases have been in decline for a generation, even as prosperity rises; toxic emissions are in deep decline; water quality is rising almost everywhere; the forested acreage of the United States has been increasing for two decades; many U.S. species are threatened, but extinctions are rare.

Rather than note these things, Democrats and leftists cry doomsday or Republican conspiracy. In a June speech Bruce Babbitt, who was secretary of the Interior under Bill Clinton, decried a supposed Republican “assault on our public lands and water.” The left strongly backs a current EPA proposal to drop the urban ozone standard from 75 parts per billion of air to 60 parts per billion. Previous anti-smog rules have been highly cost-effective; the latest proposal may be an exercise in chasing diminishing returns. But if the proposal passes, Democrats will be able to claim that 85 percent of American cities don’t meet the EPA anti-smog standard. That can be used to make it seem like the industry is despoiling the environment. Though smog itself is declining, making the rule more strict would create a politically pleasing illusion that smog is getting worse.

Many Democrats can’t bring themselves to cite environmental progress because this spoils the script in which Republicans play bogeyman trying to ruin nature. Also, citing the success of American environmental regulations prevents use of the blame-America-first strategy that is dear to the hearts of all too many Democrats.

Lots of EPA regulations are excessively complex, and their transaction costs high: streamlining would be welcome. But that’s a complicated thought. Besides, it’s election season — so bring on the bogeymen.

Here is a past column on the nuttiness of environmental regulation politics.

Photo: The Sierra Nevada Mountains are seen from Air Force One flying north towards Seattle from Los Angeles while carrying U.S. President Barack Obama, August 17, 2010. REUTERS/Larry Downing

In 2000, the Electoral College put the wrong person in the White House. Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush took the presidency. In 2004, this came amazingly close to happening again. Bush had a clear edge in the popular vote, but a slight difference in the Ohio outcome would have made John Kerry president.

Ah, the Electoral College. Because a Constitutional amendment would be required to abolish it, and the low-population states would never agree, we are stuck with this anachronism, right?

No. The next president might be chosen solely on the basis of the popular vote, without Constitutional contretemps. This is closer to happening than you – and politicians – might guess.

A nonpartisan organization, National Popular Vote,  has devised a clever end-run of the Electoral College. The Constitution specifies that each state controls the allocation of its electors. Suppose, the founders of National Popular Vote realized, states enacted laws promising to give their entire slates to the winner of the overall national popular vote.

Then whomever gets the most votes becomes president. A straight-up direct popular choice, the way governors, senators and representatives are chosen. No more putting the wrong person in the White House. No more national absurdities like the 2000 Florida recount-of-a-recount.

Just democracy.

Pie in the sky? The model legislation backed by National Popular Vote has already been passed by California, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other states representing 132 electoral votes. That’s half what a candidate needs to become president. The new laws contain a clause saying that if states representing 270 electoral votes (the victory number) commit to this plan, then the laws becoming binding – and the next president would be chosen solely by popular vote.

Momentum is building. The people’s-voice appeal of the idea is very strong. As 2012 arrives and the public learns that a true popular vote for the president is within reach, there should be grass-roots support. Any state legislators, or national party officials, who come out opposed to a national popular vote  obviously will be trying to perverse a crony system controlled by insiders.

Consider how a true popular vote for the presidency would change the presidential campaign landscape. California, Texas and New York are America’s most populous states – yet in recent presidential elections, neither candidate spent much time in any of them. The “battleground states” got all the attention, because the quirks of the Electoral College downgrade some states while magnifying others.

In 2008, John McCain spent almost no time in California or New York, Barack Obama spent almost no time in Texas – both hit the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina over and over again. The Electoral College aspects of California, Texas, New York, New England, the Old South,  the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest states were already in the bag to one party or the other, so popular vote totals in those places – two-thirds of the country! – didn’t matter. Only Florida, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina existed. On a good day, Missouri existed.

The battleground-state nonsense focuses way too much attention on a few places, while depriving much of the country of its due. Campaigning is distorted. Republican candidates don’t need to learn the concerns of liberals in California and New York; Democratic candidates don’t need to learn the concerns of conservatives in Texas and Arizona. Candidates stoke their party “base” for funds, then pander away in a few battleground states.

It’s a satire of campaigning — and gets worse every presidential election cycles as tools such as ZIP code voting analysis are refined. The unintended, pernicious impacts of the Electoral College just lead to more cynicism about politics.

This was not what the Framers had in mind when they designed the Electoral College. The Framers were nervous about direct election of presidents and of senators, believing many voters lacked access to information about current events. That was a big concern once, but not today. Direct election of senators did not come until 1913, via the 17^th Amendment to the Constitution.

Popular vote for the Senate has been the rule for a century – but the antiquated Electoral College still chooses the president. The National Popular Vote idea ends this anachronism without a minimum of travail.

Check the states that have enacted National Popular Vote bills and you’ll see they were all carried by Obama in 2008. This is not because the organization backing the idea is Democratic. Far from it: the deep pocket of National Popular Vote is populist conservative Tom Golisano, billionaire founder of a payroll-processing company. Golisano thinks politics is corrupt, and that unfiltered popular sentiment is the solution.

If the 2012 election were held today, a popular-vote regime would favor Obama, since two of the three largest states are Democratic. But party affiliations swing in cycles: just a generation ago, California was a Republican stronghold. Think about 2004 – in that election, a national popular vote standard would strongly have favored George W. Bush.

In the current presidential system, many votes don’t matter, and the leading candidate may not win. In a National Popular Vote system, every vote counts and political insiders cannot manipulate outcomes. What’s not to like?

Photo: Ballots from the Electoral College are carried into the House Chamber for a joint session of congress to count the ballots on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, January 8, 2009. Barack Obama was confirmed as president-elect and Joseph Biden was confirmed as vice president-elect. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts.

New presidential-nomination candidate Rick Perry wears his religion on his sleeve, and as a churchgoing Christian, that’s fine with me. But if you’re going to boast of your faith, brace for being seen through that lens. Jesus often denounced “scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites,” a group he called “blind fools.” That is not good news for Perry — who seems a capital-H Hypocrite.

Consider the large prayer rally Perry led this month at Houston’s Reliant Stadium. The Texas governor took considerable bashing from the media elite over this event, pundits wringing their hands about separation of church and state. There was no Constitutional problem. The First Amendment bars government from mandating religion, but does not require that government officials shun faith. A recent federal court decision, sanctioning presidential statements that encourage voluntary prayer, makes that clear. As a Christian, I hope the Houston rally brought sinners to grace.

Though fine in Constitutional terms, Perry’s ostentatious public prayer was hypocritical in terms of scripture. Jesus taught, at Matthew 6:5: “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in synagogues and at the street corners, so they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Standing in front of his own image on a gigantic Big Brother video screen in a football stadium, Perry surely was praying for the purpose of being seen by others, a behavior Jesus condemned.  “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them,” Christ also taught. Jesus was disgusted by self-flattering public displays of being holier-than-thou – exactly what Perry, hypocritically, did to help launch his campaign.

To top it off, Perry told the Houston rally, “God is wise enough not to be affiliated with any political party.” Boasting of his obedience to God, Perry said this just before declaring for leadership of a political party.

Perry is further hypocritical by spending taxpayers’ money lavishly on himself, while cutting school budgets, health care appropriations and other spending essential to the average people whom Jesus loved.

For several years, Perry has been traveling around Texas, and sometimes overseas, surrounded by a phalanx of Texas state troopers. The bodyguards are not present for security — a local police officer could handle that role. They’re present to make Perry seem more important, as if a visiting head of state. When Perry attended the Indianapolis 500 in 2010, for example, he brought eight state troopers with him at Texas taxpayer expense — to make him seem important, plus allow him to double-park and cut to the front of lines. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a humble man, had no bodyguards at the Indianapolis 500. Perry, a man who thinks “government waste” is spending on other people, strutted around surrounded by guards.

Texas newspapers have been filing the state’s equivalent of Freedom of Information requests, asking how much Perry spends on self-glorification. Two months ago, Perry snuck through the state legislature a rider that prohibits the Texas Department of Public Safety from revealing how much it spends on bodyguards for Perry and his wife on their personal trips. The prohibition lasts until 2013 — that is, till after the 2012 presidential election — and is transparently intended to prevent voters from knowing how much money Perry is hypocritically spending on himself. Not long after enacting a government-secrecy rule to protect his own appropriations, Perry called for “substantial cuts in government spending.”

More Perry hypocrisy involves him taking pay for no work. He’s gallivanting around the nation campaigning for the Republican nomination. Yet he has not taken an unpaid leave of absence from the governorship. Perry continues to draw his $150,000 taxpayer-funded salary, even as he spends his time outside Texas, promoting himself.

If you told your employer, “I won’t do my job for months as I travel to promote myself, but expect full pay the entire time,” you’d be laughed at. As chief executive of the state, Perry can take advantage of his position by paying himself to be absent. Government employees taking advantage of the taxpayer is exactly the sort of thing Perry fulminates against — unless he’s the one doing it

A public official spending his or her time campaigning for a higher office can’t possibly be giving taxpayers their money’s worth regarding present duties. The Texas public-school and public-university systems both are seriously messed up, for example. Yet Perry is shirking his duty to try to fix them, as he gallivants across the country engaged in personal self-promotion.

Some have advocated “resign-to-run” laws, which would require a public official who declares for a higher office to resign his or her present office. One former supporter of resign-to-run laws is Rick Perry. In 1989, he introduced an amendment to the Texas constitution that would have imposed “automatic resignation” on a Texas governor who declares for any national office.

Now Perry is doing what he said others should not do. The word for this sort of thing begins with the letter H. So far, hypocrisy is the defining element of the Perry campaign.

Photo: Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks during “The Response,” an event billed as a call to prayer for the nation in crisis, at Reliant Stadium in Houston August 6, 2011. REUTERS/Richard Carson

In April 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said there was “no chance” Treasury bills could lose their AAA rating. The fact that top government officials thought there was “no chance” something could happen surely is one reason it happened.

U.S. government bond ratings are falling — the S&P downgraded the US credit rating yesterday from AAA to AA-plus, the stock market is plummeting — such movements don’t necessarily have story lines like Hollywood movies. Herd instinct and randomness are factors. Even top economists can’t agree on exactly why the Dow headed south.

But the bond rating drop unequivocally is a direct result of the Barack Obama-John Boehner national-debt deal being as phony as a three-dollar-bill.

Stocks for their part began to fall two weeks ago, on rumors the Obama-Boehner deal would contain nothing but pandering. The drop accelerated – 6.1 percent of the 10.5 percent decline – pretty much to the hour, on Monday, when the deal became final and it was clear that reports were correct. Monday, markets learned that people at the top of the government of the United States were going to do nothing at all about the national debt, beyond acting like windbags.

America had been elaborately warned that endless borrowing to appease interest groups doesn’t work – the warnings have come from Greece, Ireland, Portugal and most of all from Japan. President Obama and congressional leaders of both parties ignored those warnings and ordered another round of champagne, agreeing to a deal that includes $2.4 trillion of fresh borrowing by 2012, paired with only $21 billion in specific cuts in the same period — about $115 spent for each $1 saved.

That Super Committee to which the debt can has been kicked? The core problem of U.S. fiscal policy is that federal taxes are too low and entitlement spending too high. Yet the Super Committee is all but forbidden to discuss Social Security reductions or tax increases. Good luck finding trillions of dollars of savings in the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Of course leading indicators are an aspect of the market drop. Growth is slow. European debt may be in worse shape than European Union leaders are letting on. On Monday, the Institute of Supply Management reported the lowest figure in a year for its influential Purchasing Managers Index. Though, the ISM also reported, “Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in July for the 24th consecutive month.”

So factory orders aren’t great but aren’t awful either. Yesterday’s news of mildly positive jobs numbers cautions against pushing the panic button.

Even if indicators could be a lot better, the main piece of new information added to markets in the last two weeks has been that Washington is leaderless.

Both parties, and both the White House and Congress, are more interested in blowing smoke than in firm action. Both parties are terrified of offending any special-interest group. That’s a formula for turning the United States into Japan, as The Economist’s spooky cover suggested. And if you think the United States is in peril of turning into Japan economically, then stock prices should drop.

Some commentators believe Washington should be diving even deeper into debt, for Keynesian reasons. Since the recession began in early 2008, the United States has borrowed $5.6 trillion – nearly the entire national debt not in the dim past, but the year 2000. American is now on track to borrow another $2.4 trillion by the end of 2012.

That will mean $8 trillion of debt-based spending merely from 2008 to 2012. Stated in today’s money, the United States borrowed $3.9 trillion during World War II. If $8 trillion of debt-based spending in a short period doesn’t have the desired Keynesian impact on growth and jobs — then either Keynesianism doesn’t work,  or something else is happening.

The vote here is that something else is happening. The something else is that every time the United States borrows more against the future, the future becomes less valuable. If you think the nation’s leaders are squabbling children, you save rather than spend (if a consumer) and horde cash rather than invest (if a corporation). Both behaviors are being observed.

This won’t change until clear, specific action – not windbag grandstanding – is taken against debt trends. That action must include entitlement cuts and tax increases. The political parties must stop living in a dreamworld on these topics.

Democrats have taken to calling Social Security “a program for the poor.” This is pure dreamworld. Most Social Security benefits flow to the middle class, and must be trimmed; some flow to the rich, and must be eliminated.

Republicans who live in a tax-cuts dreamworld should ask, “What would Reagan do?” The answer is that Ronald Reagan would raise taxes. Faced with ballooning deficits, Reagan backed an income tax increase in 1982 and a corporate tax increase in 1986. The nation’s books righted themselves, and 20 years of boom growth and high employment followed.

There is no path out of the current problem that does not include tax increases and entitlement cuts. On Monday, Washington’s leaders showed they are terrified of that fact. When will they find resolve?

Maybe Washington can start paying invoices with $3 bills — because the “dramatic” agreement to “reduce the national debt” is as phony as a three dollar bill.

Weeks of nearly round-the-clock negotiations among the White House, House and Senate have led to an “historic” debt deal that consists almost entirely of fluff, doublespeak and empty promises.

The politicians involved get to claim victory, and presumably will be rewarded with votes and campaign donations from the special-interest groups that, pretty much across the board, were spared any pain. Young people of the United States once again are hammered. If the deal becomes law, the national debt will rise again dramatically, while there’s no guarantee any cut will materialize — and the bill for this recklessness will be passed along to those under age 30.

Consider:

* The closest thing to a tangible “saving” in the agreement is $1 trillion in caps on discretionary programs, spread over 10 years. The new national-debt ceiling allows borrowing to rise by $2.4 trillion, with a plan to pay back less than half that amount over 10 years.

Get it? A huge surge in spending now is called a “spending cut,” while actual cuts don’t take effect for up to a decade. And that’s setting aside that inflation means the present value of money spent today sharply exceeds the value of smaller cuts many years in the future.

* In December 2010, the White House and Congress agreed to $930 billion in fresh deficit spending, as the fourth stimulus plan enacted since the 2008 recession. When special-interest groups say they want a “second stimulus,” remember, we’ve already had four. So $930 billion in extra borrowing right away is followed by a plan for about the same amount in savings years in the future. This is what Democrats and Republicans alike today are calling “fiscal discipline” or “draconian cuts.” If you emptied your bank account today but declared you would become careful about money 10 years in the future, people would laugh at you.

* By projecting the only tangible savings — which aren’t even specified, but are merely caps — into the future, the plan allows Congress to cancel them. In 2012 or any future year, Congress will say, “We can’t have caps this year because of the [INSERT ANY WORD CHOSEN AT RANDOM] crisis. We are postponing action till next year.” Rinse and repeat.

* The deal raises the federal borrowing ceiling by $2.4 trillion. This means Congress will immediately spend another $2.4 trillion. That basic point is being overlooked.

You’ve got a debt ceiling on your credit card. The ceiling is there for emergencies, and all responsible borrowers work to stay below their credit ceilings. Experience with the national debt ceiling, by contrast, shows that every dollar of available debt is always spent. Announced in doublespeak as a “savings” plan, this deal guarantees the national debt will rise another $2.4 trillion. The moment the deal becomes law, members of Congress from both parties will see an added $2.4 trillion in the cookie jar and begin raiding.

* A new “joint bipartisan committee” will be charged with identifying another $1.5 trillion in cuts. Doing nothing today, while appointing a committee that will make the tough decisions later, is one of Washington’s worst traditions of pure phoniness.

The president, Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader just negotiated nearly round-the-clock for weeks and they couldn’t even agree to cut programs that are transparent boondoggles. So bring in the special committee! This is total abdication of leadership by the president and both political parties.

* Will the bipartisan committee have the stones to impose cuts? Since January 2007, Congress has already been operating under Paygo rules, which specify no more deficit spending — unless waivers are issued. Waivers are always issued! The national debt has increased by $6.6 trillion since Paygo “discipline” was “imposed.” Likely outcome: the bipartisan committee holds somber meetings and recommends cuts, then Congress issues waivers, citing the [INSERT ANY WORD CHOSEN AT RANDOM] crisis.

It’s been a mere nine months since the last bipartisan deficit commission issued its recommendation, and those findings have been totally ignored by the White House and Congress. In a postmodern touch of humor, the last bipartisan deficit commission titled its findings “The Moment of Truth.”

* Won’t the proposed balanced-budget amendment fix the problem? Assuming such an amendment passed Congress, it must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. There’s no chance of this — because the states love deficit spending! Nearly 40 percent of state and local government spending is financed by the federal government — Washington borrows, then ships money to the states. If a federal balanced budget amendment went into effect, the states would have to fund themselves, rather than rely on Washington for free cash (all the while denouncing “the big spenders” in D.C.).

Calling for a balanced-budget amendment is classic political delaying tactics, since even a successful amendment would require many years to ratify. Nothing stops Congress from balancing the budget right now.

* Congress continues to drive the nation deeper into debt when there are many problems but no national emergency, and before the Baby Boomer retire. Extra borrowing sure hasn’t fixed the economy. Japan’s example shows that undisciplined borrowing slows economic recovery by causing business to think the nation is going downhill, and thus to hoard cash rather than invest. That’s precisely what is being observed in the United States right now.

* The worst aspect of the phony-as-a-$3-bill national debt deal is that the middle-aged men and women who run Washington are acting irresponsibly, then passing the problem along to their children. What kind of adult harms the future of his or her own offspring?

Last week a record-setting heat wave afflicted much of the United States — yet there were no brownouts.

Electricity shortages during heat waves long have been common. We tend to miss what doesn’t happen, and what didn’t happen last week was electric power scarcity.

Two factors are at play, one positive and one vexing.

The positive factor is gradual decline in electricity demand. From 1996 to 2007, U.S. power consumption rose 23 percent. Since then, consumption has declined 16 percent. Taking population growth into account, per capita demand decline since 2007 is even greater. Details are in this fun report — every day must be a party at the Energy Information Administration.

The recession is not the root cause — electricity consumption began to moderate before the economy cooled. Homeowners, and businesses, finally are getting religious about high-efficiency lights, programmable thermostats and other power-saving technology. If the United States could achieve, in petroleum use, the same demand-curve moderation observed with electricity, America’s dependence on Persian Gulf dictatorships would decline, along with U.S. greenhouse gas output.

Now the vexing factor. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, he declared a looming electricity crisis that would require a national crash program to build generating stations and power lines. This political wolf-cry was forgotten when 9/11 happened. Forgotten, that is, by pundits and national candidates for office. But not by the permanent bureaucracy: last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission published rules, years in the making, intended to trigger a major initiative to build power lines.

There are places in the country where lines, and other grid improvements, are needed. But the regulatory bureaucracy is behaving as though power transmission were the crisis Bush once proclaimed it to be — even as moderating demand reduces stress on the system. The potential is for a white elephant: lots of capital sunk into long-distance power lines even as electricity demand continues to moderate, or as localized “distributed generation” catches on.

Here’s the kicker — environmentalists, who for decades opposed power lines because they made possible large, centralized coal-fired generating stations, now are supporters of new lines.

Other things being equal, you’d expect the Obama administration would overturn the Bush administration’s initiative to invest large sums in centralized electricity infrastructure. But now that the environmental lobby perceives an interest in such infrastructure, this has caused Obama’s regulatory agencies to favor the Bush-begun push. The FERC decision makes it easier to build power lines across state borders or through the jurisdictions of grid-management firms such as PJM.

Why has the political left switched sides on power lines? Big solar power installations will be in deserts or other areas far from cities, requiring new electricity lines. Most wind farms will be in rural areas. Colorado, for example, just approved a 150-mile, $180 million line to bring wind and solar electricity generated in the alpine area of the state to Denver.

Set aside whether the economics of remote solar and wind power make sense. The 2010 book “Power Hungry” by Robert Bryce contends that remote solar and wind farms will require so much capital that greater greenhouse-gas reductions could be attained, at lower cost, via energy conservation technology at homes and businesses.

But solar and wind are politically correct. Politicians want to be photographed at groundbreaking ceremonies for high-tech green power. And there’s no way big solar and wind energy facilities will fly without a commitment to invest billions in new power lines and their attendant rights-of-way. Utility customers will face higher rates, and investors lower dividends, as new lines are built to solar and wind facilities.

Considering enviros once campaigned for small-is-beautiful solutions such as roof solar panels for schools, that environmental lobbyists now back huge investments in power lines seems one of history’s little ironies. What if it turns out the small-is-beautiful view was right all along?

Distributed generation — lots of local, low-output power plants rather than a few high-output central facilities — may be the next new thing in electricity. Distributed generation would eliminate transmission losses, which can claim as much as a third of watts in a large grid. Local generation would make the power system less susceptible to regional failures, such as the Northeast blackout of 2003. And distributed generation may not just mean local green power: it could mean lots of small natural-gas or hydrogen-fired generators. It could mean small, local-use atomic reactors running on nuclear waste.

Right now central power generation using coal is more cost-effective than distributed generation, even considering transmission losses. But the engineering action is in new ideas for local power, which not far into the future may become a more cost-effective way to generate watts, while cutting out the middleman of transmission. In 19th century Europe, district steam plants made heat for apartment buildings and offices, because the on-site furnace was neither safe nor efficient. That changed. The same change may be in store for how we obtain electricity.

In a decade or two, by the time billions of dollars have been spent and the lines built, power generation may have gone local. Then long-distance power lines may become the next Iridium, a very complex and costly infrastructure for a problem that turns out to have a local solution.

Photo: Detroit Edison’s Trenton Channel Power Plant is seen in Trenton, Michigan April 8, 2009. U.S. concerns about the potential for cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure extended to the American electrical power grid on Wednesday and experts pointed the finger anew at Chinese hackers, among others. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

Over the past three generations, America’s leaders have faced down the Depression, won World War II, won the Cold War, created Social Security and Medicare, passed the Civil Rights Act and dramatically expanded environmental protection. The record is one of boldness and triumph.

Today, America’s leaders face the challenge of reducing giveaways to special-interest groups. That is what the national debt issue boils down to — do Congress and the White House have what it takes to say “no” to interest groups that want to be showered with borrowed money?

Anybody can agree to a giveaway. In politics, nothing is easier than handing out bags of candy while making empty promises about fiscal discipline in the future. No mettle is required endlessly to say that this year everybody gets everything they want but look out, next year we get serious.

Saying “no” is often the essence of leadership. To address the national debt, Congress and the White House must say no to tax favors for the affluent, no to Social Security benefits for people who don’t need them, no to a defense budget that lacks discipline, no to the pass-along mentality of health care, no to handouts for agriculture, for the states, for programs that feather someone’s nest but make no sense. (Such as $200 million in subsidies per year to fly mostly empty planes to towns only an hour’s drive from a large airport.) No to the countless interest groups that want fiscal restraint in other people’s programs, but view their own handouts as a super ultra-crisis.

Ponder what American leaders of the near past have overcome, and you’ll feel something close to shame that today’s leaders depict merely reducing giveaways to special-interest groups as a challenge of epic proportions.

The threat before the nation is not hostile foreign powers or racial hatred — the threat is our own political system’s lack of accountability for giveaways. The beast that must be tamed is quite timid compared to beasts of the near past. Yet the country’s leaders fear the slightest step in its direction.

Threats such as World War II and the Cold War were external in nature, and human nature often responds more readily to external concerns. The national debt threat is internal, arising from faults in ourselves — in our political system’s demand from unlimited champagne today, with the bill sent to future generations.

No sinister outsiders forced the national debt on us: we did it to ourselves, with eyes open. We borrowed and spent as if tomorrow would never come — and now it’s here. Just eight months ago, in December 2010, President Barack Obama and the leaders of Congress — including the House Republicans leaders now crying disaster about the debt ceiling — enacted $930 billion in new tax favors, giveaways and handouts. Knowing the national debt was getting worse fast, they agreed to borrow-and-spend in an irresponsible manner.

No outsider forced this on us — we did it to ourselves.

Have our leaders the courage possessed by American leaders of the near past, the courage to do what the country needs regardless of what is popular? Have our leaders the courage to ask for shared sacrifice — with the rich, the middle class, entitlement recipients and corporations all surrendering something?

Can Barack Obama, John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell show us they have so much as one-half the leadership strength of their forebears who faced down Communism and brought civil rights to the whole of the nation?

Stated in today’s dollars, one decade ago the national debt was $6.9 trillion. Today it is $14.3 trillion — meaning that adjusted for inflation, the United States has borrowed more money in the last decade than in its previous 212 years of existence. And this has been done when there is no national emergency! The country has all manner of problems, but faces nothing remotely like the emergency of World War II.

The runaway borrowing has occurred under Republicans and Democrats, beginning with George W. Bush in 2007, who launched the ruinous Iraq adventure based entirely on borrowed money, and continuing to Obama, who has backed three “stimulus” giveaways despite clear evidence that this doesn’t work. At the current pace, the national debt will hit $23 trillion in 10 years,  meaning the country will have borrowed twice as much in two decades as in its previous 212 years of existence.

Worse, the runaway borrowing has occurred before the baby boomers retire. Americans have known for decades that starting around 2015, spending for pensioners and their health care must rise. Rather than save in preparation for that day, the nation’s leaders of both parties have spent with abandon. When the young borrow to spend wildly, society calls that irresponsible. When the middle-aged borrow to spend wildly, they call themselves presidents, senators, representatives and governors.

The national debt is not only bad in and of itself — surely economic recovery is being held back by the unchecked debt. Investors perceive U.S. leadership of both parties to be self-absorbed and unconcerned with the greater good, so they ship their capital to nations with better long-term prospects.

Previous generations of American leaders saved the country from grave predicaments. The current generation is asked only to reign in giveaways. Do the people in Washington have this in them?

By Gregg Easterbrook
The views expressed are his own.

Today’s Wall Street Journal in its lead editorial declares Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation all but saints walking on Earth, claiming “politicians and competitors are using the phone-hacking years ago at a British corner of News Corporation to assail the Journal and perhaps injure press freedom.”

If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, press freedom is the last refuge of tabloid gutter-dwellers. But note two corruptions in that single sentence of the Journal’s embarrassing editorial.

First, casually the Journal acknowledges the scandal’s initial charge is true, referring to “the phone-hacking years ago at a British corner of News Corp.” Just last week, Murdoch was vehemently saying in the Journal’s pages that some of the accusations were “total lies."

Second, the Journal pretends everything bad happened “years” in the past. Yet just a week ago, before Murdoch’s weekend admission that “serious wrongdoing occurred,” Murdoch and other News Corporation officials were insisting their company was unfairly accused. The hacking was the initial offense. The attempted cover-up was a second and in some ways greater offense, because there is no such thing as a “rogue” cover-up: all cover-ups start at the top.

Nevertheless the Journal pretends everything bad happened “years ago.” How painful to behold the paper’s editorial page sell its soul to engage in obvious boot-kissing for Murdoch and his front-office minions.

If we’d taken the Wall Street Journal’s word for it as recently as last week, all would have been hushed over. Compare this to the Washington Post’s brutal honesty about Janet Cooke, or the New York Times’s brutal honesty about Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. Compare them, and you have the difference between – journalism and the News Corporation.

White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) men are supposed to hold the reins of power in the United States. All but two presidents have been WASP males; almost all Supreme Court justices; most leaders of the House and Senate.

Today everyone knows America has a black president for the first time. It’s also the first time in American history that neither the president nor the vice president are WASPs. Of the six apparent frontrunners for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination to oppose Barack Obama, just one is a WASP. Of the four leaders of Congress, only one is a WASP. The Supreme Court not only has no WASP, it has no Protestant.

Is this the twilight of the WASPs?

Consider the absence of WASP males at the top of public life. The president is African American, the vice president is Catholic. Current favorites to top the Republican 2012 ticket are Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, Mormons; Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, women; Newt Gingrich, a Catholic and Tim Pawlenty, a Baptist.

That makes Pawlenty the sole WASP male at the pinnacle of the current national-leadership scramble, and his claim to WASP-hood is somewhat tenuous. Pawlenty attends a Minnesota church that belongs to the hardline Baptist General Convention, which may or may not be right about faith but definitely is not a mainstream Protestant denomination, such as the American Baptist Convention.

In Congress, Speaker of the House John Boehner is Catholic, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is female, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is Mormon. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is the sole WASP male in top leadership. At least, he probably is. In interviews 20 years ago, McConnell described himself as a mainstream Baptist. Recently, McConnell has dropped mention of religion from his official bio.

At the Supreme Court, six justices are Catholic, three are Jewish. Four of the Court’s members — Ruth Ginsberg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas — are reverse twofers, neither white male nor Protestant. When Louis Brandeis (first Jewish justice) was confirmed in 1916, and Thurgood Marshall (first African American justice) joined the Court in 1967, and Sandra O’Connor (first female justice) joined in 1981, each had a shockwave impact on establishment politics. Today, if Barack Obama nominated a WASP male to the Supreme Court, that’s what would be considered shocking.

Surely the overall situation would have amazed Edward Baltzell, whose 1964 book The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America popularized the term WASP. Baltzell was a consummate member of that class: born into an old-money Philadelphia family, raised in the Episcopal church, shipped off in youth to an expensive boarding school, then on to the Ivy League. He styled himself “E. Digby Baltzell” because it sounded more right-you-are-old-chap. Becoming a professor at Penn, he studied the Social Register, once the Wikipedia of American snobbery.

When John Kennedy ran for president in 1960, his Catholic faith — his failure to be a WASP — initially was a source of controversy among voters. If a member of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints is a presidential candidate in 2012, will that be controversial?

Probably not. To some, JFK embodied the centuries of Protestant-Catholic warfare in Europe — Mormonism has no equivalent backstory. The 2012 elections may cause a tedious debate about whether Mormons are Christians: since they consider themselves Christian, that’s good enough for me. Hopefully most voters will assess a Romney or Huntsman candidacy on the merits of whether either seems best for the job.

The political parallel would be not to 1960 but to 1952, when the very WASPy Adlai Stevenson faced Dwight Eisenhower, a Jehovah’s Witness. Like the Latter-Day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses hold some beliefs that make traditionalist Christians scratch their heads. But in 1952, voters were concerned foremost with whether Eisenhower was the best candidate, and that pattern should repeat in 2012. (After being elected, Ike became a Presbyterian, so in a sense he converted to WASP-hood.)

Why are WASP males suddenly knocked off the public pedestal? Perhaps just coincidence. Or maybe it means discrimination against non-WASPs at long last has ended. If the latter, that public debate hasn’t noticed the twilight of the WASP male should be seen as a positive sign.

What if the 2012 White House race pits an African American and a Catholic versus a woman and a Mormon? E. Digby Baltzell would roll over in his grave — but it would be a great day for America. The United States, after all, is a country where how you define yourself matters far more than how society defines you.

Postscript:

Here the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life breaks down American faith affiliations. WASPs must belong to the “mainline” Protestant categories, though this concept can be fuzzy. For instance, Pew classes 7 percent of Americans under “historically black churches” rather than as “mainline Protestant.” Yet most historically black worship is mainline, rooted in traditional theology. Note from Pew data  that the Episcopal/Anglican cohort — wellspring of 11 presidents, most of any denomination — is down to just 1.4 percent of the population.

Wondering about me? I belong to one of the country’s sadly few joint Christian-Jewish congregations, and like Sarah Palin, describe myself as “nondenominational Christian.”

Governments in Greece, Portugal, the United States and elsewhere are borrowing, and often wasting, money at a reckless pace. Why do banks and financial markets cooperate? Because there’s something in it for them.

They keep a little slice of the public money being borrowed or wasted. Only a sliver. But the more that is borrowed, the larger the sliver becomes.

This is the Sliver Strategy, and it underlies the ways many of the Western world’s wealthy institutions relate to government.

Here’s how the Sliver Strategy works. If government spends a moderate sum and an interest group gets a large share, this will be noticed and denounced. If government spends a gigantic amount  and the interest group gets a sliver, this won’t be noticed. But a sliver of a gigantic amount may be more than a large share of a moderate sum.

Many sovereign bonds and similar securities, for instance, are accompanied by credit-default swaps, which may amount to around half a percent of the amount borrowed. That’s just a sliver. But the more borrowed, the larger the sliver.

Half a percent of the low-end estimate on default swaps for bad Greek debt is $35 million.  Half a percent on the high-end estimate of the roughly $600 billion that Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy are — let’s just say in arrears on —  is $6 billion. Quite a sliver!

In the case of default swap fees, these proceeds go directly to the bottom line of financial companies, boosting short-term profits and pumping up executive bonuses. The more that is borrowed — by governments directly, or by quasi-government entities such as Fannie Mae — the bigger the sliver, and the bigger the executive bonuses.

In the case of many kinds of swaps, the fees are pure profit since if the loan defaults or otherwise goes south, the swap issuer will just shrug and claim penury. This is what happened in 2008 when AIG, the world’s largest issuer of default swaps, simply refused to cover the debts it had claimed to insure, handing a $182 billion bailout tab to U.S. taxpayers. Amusingly, AIG called its products “collateralized” default swaps, though it turned out there was little or no collateral. What a sense of humor those AIG crooks had! The swaps were pure profit — AIG took rich fees for providing nothing at all, other than a blessing that securities firms could use to pretend their issuances were backstopped against default.

How many AIG-like or Lehman-like slivers are out there right now in bad European debt? Nobody really knows. If it’s any consolation, the professional organization of derivatives and similar all-but-unregulated financial instruments promises “safe, efficient markets.”

Other kinds of Sliver Strategies have corrupting impacts on finance and government.

Why did big banks underwrite the liars’ loans that caused the housing bubble? Because they took origination fees and other payments, then passed the toxic debt along to taxpayers. The greater the loan volume the larger the sliver — and most of the slivers ended up in the pockets of the banks’ top management.

Why do defense contractors and  companies that build roads, rail and bridges love cost overruns? The more bloated the final bill, the larger their sliver. If the Godzilla attack helicopter program cost $10 billion and the contractor kept a third as profit, the public would be outraged. If exactly the same program cost $50 billion and the contractor got a tenth as profit, the public will be quiet — though the former is a far more cost-effective buy than the latter.

Why does the U.S. Congress support obvious boondoggles, such as $6 billion a year in  subsidies for corn ethanol production? A reverse Sliver Strategy is at play. The more money Congress wastes on corn ethanol, the more the ethanol lobby donates to members of Congress. The donations are but a sliver of the total subsidy — meaning the total subsidy must be large for the sliver to matter.

This incentive to hand out very large sums, in order to get back small sums as donations, is a hidden factor in many congressional decisions about agriculture policy, Social Security benefits and other issues. If members of Congress simply awarded themselves a couple hundred thousand dollars each for campaign expenses, the public would be furious. But if Congress gives away hundreds of billions of dollars, in order to ensure a couple hundred thousand dollars per member comes back as donations, the Sliver Strategy goes unnoticed.

The experience of Greece and Portugal — and perhaps the United States — shows that undisciplined borrow-and-spend depresses economic performance. So you’d think institutions with a major stake in national economic success, such as banks and industrial sectors, would resist government’s impulse to borrow.

Instead they are enablers, because the Sliver Strategy puts a cut directly into their pockets. It is one of the insidious reasons many nations’ balance sheets look steadily worse.