With President Bush’s declaration that the government will give General Motors and Chrysler up to $17.4 billion in short-term loans, the whole world will be watching Detroit to see whether the cash makes a difference in the automakers’ long-term profitability. The observers won’t include a car czar – Bush’s plan includes no such position. But the plan does call for autoworkers’ pay concessions within 2009.
Are taxes on Twinkies and Coke the answer to what ails state budgets and U.S. health care? New York Gov. David Paterson wants a 18 percent sales tax on soft drinks and other nondiet sugary beverages to help fill a hole in his state budget. On today’s Opinion pages, Nicholas Kristof endorses Paterson’s idea, not because of the revenue stream but because it “would shift some consumers, especially kids, to diet drinks or water” and help fight the obesity epidemic.
Remember how underdog John McCain kept saying he had the ascendant Democrats just where he wanted them? Maybe he had a point. In a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, 56 percent of Americans say they think Democrats will do a better job handling the country’s major challenges in the next few years. Just 23 percent say the same of Republicans. Those are some high expectations in hard times. As ABC News’ Rick Klein said: “The Democrats wanted to be in power, and they’ve gotten their wish. Can these numbers retain anything like their current shape once the reality of an Obama administration confronting manifold big problems sets in?”
Some Wichitans will judge incoming City Manager Robert Layton’s annual salary of $185,000, plus perks and benefits, to be excessive. Vice Mayor Sue Schlapp expressed solid concerns Thursday about the size of his contract, especially because of the significant disparities between urban Wichita and the small Des Moines suburb that Layton now manages. Our editorial today argues that once the council majority voted to hire Layton, it had to offer him something approaching the average pay of managers of cities with populations of 250,000 to 500,000 ($188,000). And just last summer it had been willing to pay Pat Salerno $215,000. Layton’s rich severance package of one year’s pay was probably necessary, too, given that the 4-3 council vote to offer him the job left him wondering what he was walking into. At least the yearlong hunt is over. As we concluded, “in the year to come, let’s have no more city manager searches.”
President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to cut America’s carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 – a goal that most of the world’s scientists believe is vital to avoid catastrophic global climate change. That goal will involve sacrifice, but it is achievable. Using the “bully pulpit” of the White House, Obama will be able to move Americans to make the lifestyle changes necessary to reduce their currently oversized carbon footprint to a trimmer, energy-efficient size by midcentury. His aggressive plan to put the United States in the avant garde of global environmental leaders already has the support of key congressional leadership. Obama’s plan, which will rely on a free-market-oriented federal carbon cap and trade system, also foresees a cut in carbon emissions from U.S.-manufactured cars by 5 percent in 2015 and by 10 percent in 2020. After eight years of the Bush administration discounting the threat of a rapidly warming planet, Obama is keenly aware that far too much valuable time already has been wasted. – Wayne Madsen, Online Journal
Obama promised to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 – approximately a 16 percent cut – and then to cut them an additional 80 percent by 2050. That would mean trimming U.S. carbon emissions to roughly where they were in 1905. Think about 1905 for a minute. There were just 77,988 registered vehicles in the United States, compared with more than 250 million today. Less than 10 percent of the country had electricity, fewer than 5 percent of households had electric clothes washers, only a handful of Americans had dishwashers and no one had air conditioning. Life expectancy was only 47 years, about 30 years shorter than today – although it may have seemed a whole lot longer than that. Reducing America’s greenhouse gases to 1905 levels, even including the substantial energy efficiency gains already made and those projected for the future, would be very costly and require a wrenching transformation of our way of life. – David A. Ridenour, vice president, National Center for Public Policy Research
