Under recent bipartisan Congressional pressure, led by Jeff Bingaman (D- N. Mex), the US has stopped buying 76,000 barrels of oil per day to add to America's 702 million barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

In taking this decision, the administration was responding to a 97-1 vote in the Senate and an overwhelming vote in the House, based in part on the idea that in a time of rising prices the government shouldn't be contributing to aggregate demand.

Immediately, after the announcement of the suspension of purchases, the price of oil ... continued to rise.  

One of the things I least enjoy about paying taxes is that, for all practical purposes, I have no say in how the money is spent.  

This wouldn't be so bad, except that I would probably not spend my taxes the way Congress does.  Leaving aside billions in pork, farm subsidies, the national endowment for the arts and the occupation of Iraq are not things I would choose to fund. (You may have different priorities and that's fine. That is kind of the point of this fantasy.)

Note that I'm not suggesting that my tax burden should be reduced;  there are needs and lots of them to be met with our tax dollars.

Unlike many stories on this topic, this story has no drama and no tragedy.

I happened to be speaking with someone from HR at the company I recently joined. I was the firm's 50th or 51st employee The firm has undergone some restructuring this year, as a result of which it is no longer part of a larger firm.  

The HR person mentioned that the firm's cost for health care was going to increase about 29%.  Had it remained below 50 employees, the increase would have been nearly 80%.  (Even absent the restructuring the increase would have reached 18%.)

In deciding the case of Medellin v. Texas today a majority of Supreme Court justices including Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas rejected Bush claims of inherent Presidential authority.  

Medellin, a Mexican national and convicted murderer had been sentenced to death by Texas.  The International Court of Justice had ruled that pursuant to a treaty to which the United States was signatory, Medellin was entitled to a reconsideration of his sentence.  The President had issued a memorandum stating that the US would comply with its treaty obligations by having State courts give effect to the decision of the Internatinal Court of Justice.

Based on this, Medellin brought a habeas corpus petitition in Texas court.

I seem to have been stripped of my ratings ability.  

This struck me as kind of odd, because in the months I've been here I've collected a shamefully low number of troll ratings (zero, to be exact) and haven't handed many out (actually, that is probably zero as well, though it's not something I've kept careful trck of).

I haven't written diaries that have spawned cries for deletion.  In short, I've been boring.

New York remains one of a handful of states in which Clinton will clearly be victorious on Tuesday by a relatively large (double digit) margin.  Current polls show her leading by between 16% and 21%.  

New York is likely to be the state which generates the biggest net delegate gain for Hillary.  How many delegates will this be?

I posted a diary a few days ago discussing the potential issues facing the Clinton campaign.

This diary updates that diary and discusses the obstacles facing Obama.

Since the South Carolina primary four relevant events have happened; two favor Obama and two favor Clinton.

1.  First, Caroline Kennedy wrote a powerful endorsement of Obama explicitly comparing him with JFK. This was followed by Senator Kennedy endorsing Obama.  Most endorsements don't mean that much.  This may be an exception with three groups: (i) older voters; (ii) Irish/Catholic voters; (iii) voters from Massachusetts.  It has also been suggested that the Kennedy ensorsement will help with Latino voters, but I'm a bit more skeptical of that.  

The last few weeks have revealed that Hillary Clinton's campaign faces some significant and fundamental problems.  They are not insurmountable by any means and she may well wind up with the nomination; but they are serious enough that I no longer would bet on her victory.

The problems her campaign is facing are the following:

1.  Hillary is very much a known quantity, having been on the national stage for over 15 years.  While this gives her some advantages (making it impossible for others to define her, for example), it also means that she can't alter who she is.  In and of itself, this isn't a problem; however...

I want to congratulate Vice President Gore on winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming.

Gore has been interested in the environment generally, and global warming in particular for decades.  Since "losing" the Presidential election Gore has made significantly greater strides in alerting people to the danger of global warming than he was able to do in prior years. This is work that he clearly wants to do, that he is needed to do and that he is more effective at doing than anyone else on the planet.

This is the reason Al Gore should not run for President.

Hillary has replaced her baby bond idea with a new proposal to provide tax credits to persons saving for retirement.  Under her proposal, married couples earning less than $60,000 a year would get a dollar for dollar tax credit for each dollar saved in a retirement account up to $1000.  Those earning between $60,000 and $100,000 would get a 50 cent credit for each dollar saved in a retirement account up to $1000.

Her baby bond idea was not well thought out.  Indeed, she backed off of that one pretty quickly.  This, however, seems like a fully thought out policy proposal.

Is it a good idea?

The NY Times reported in Dangerous Sealer Stayed on Shelves After Recall that a company responded to a recall request by the Consumer Product Safety Commission by reformulating a product in a way that didn't fix the problem.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission didn't have the resources to test the company's reformulated product.  Thus, a dangerous product, apparently responsible for sickening at least 80 and killing two, remained on the shelves for an additional 18 months.

Frankly, I don't know who is responsible for the failure to provide the resources the CPSC needs to do its job adequately.  I do know that all of us rely on it to help keep ourselves and our loved ones safe in an increasingly complex world.

Rahm Emanuel, on Real Time with Bill Maher, said refusing to provide funds for the Iraq war wasn't a viable option. Essentially his rationale was that the funding bill for the Iraq war provided improved Humvees and body armor which was necessary for the safety of our soldiers in Iraq.

My initial reaction on reading this, was that this was bullshit.  Of course, we all want to support our troops, but if these things were necessary for the safety of the troops, couldn't they just be put in a separate bill for the purchase of Humvees and body armor?

I'm sure you see the problem with this though.  What are we spending money on in connection with our presence in Iraq that doesn't help the troops? And if everything in the Iraq war funding bill helps the troops, what do we defund?  And if what we defund doesn't impair the ability of the troops to perform their mission, how effective can it be?

Hillary Clinton has just proposed providing every baby born in the United States with $5,000. This money would not be accessible until the child turns 18, at which point it could be used for college or, according to some sources, purchase of a home.  Apparently, the money would bear interest until that point. Estimates of the cost are on the order of $20 billion per year.

As someone who is likely to start a family in the next few years, I'd like to say thanks for the money.  My brother, who is the father of two beautiful little girls, may not be as happy, since his daughters will not get the benefit of this program.

Going to war with Iran is stupid and counterproductive. It is unlikely to accomplish American policy objectives (reducing Iranian influence in the Middle East, eliminating Iraninan hostility to the United States and Israel, or preventing Iran from making nuclear weapons).  

In some cases, it is likely to reduce the chance of achieving American policy objectives.  For example, attempts to persuade Iran through a mixture of diplomacy and economic sanctions that Iran should not pursue nuclear weapons are likely to be unavailing after Iran has been attacked by the world's greatest military power which has eliminated the two regimes on either side of Iran.

Similarly, a major attack on Iran is likely to increase the hostility of the Iranian government toward the US and the support of the Iranian people for the Iranian regime.

  Not that long ago in Manhattan, half the taxicabs went on strike.  During the strike, I didn't take taxicabs, because doing so was too expensive to make it worthwhile.  Friends of mine also cut down on their taxicab usage.

   Some people were inconvenienced but nothing truly bad happened, because New York has, especially in Manhattan a very good transportation network.

   Some good things happened as well.  There was less traffic.  Less carbon dioxide was emitted.  More people used public transportation.

Apparently, the melting of Arctic sea ice has reached the point that it is possible to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Arctic - opening the fabled Northwest Passage searched for by many European explorers over the centuries.  The world might have been a different place had this route been open a few centuries ago.

This is a significant geographic change occuring on a human timescale and effected by human beings - something that would have been the province of speculative science fiction instead of sober news when I was growing up and even more recently.

I remember reading the IPCC report in 2001.  There was nothing to suggest that less than a decade later Arctic sea ice would have melted to this extent.  Frankly, this has me worried. It suggests that we may have been underestimating the speed and effects of global warming.

If we are going to make significant progress on reducing the American presence in Iraq before 2009, it seems likely that we will need the support of some Congressional Republicans.

Are we going to get any?  

So far the signs have not been positive, but this may be beginning to change.

This was a description on the front page of Bob Kerrey. Generally, Kerrey received good ratings from liberal interest groups and bad ones from conservative groups, but he is 'bad' on two high profile issues.

Is this an acceptable position for a Democratic Senator or Senate candidate.  At some point, do positions like this take a candidate so far out of the mainstream of the Democratic Party that they are not appropriate nominees.  In other words, "What makes someone a real Democrat?"

On the one hand, this may be something to be careful about getting into, because we certainly don't want to kick people out of our party who might be allies on many issues.  On the other hand, at some point, it's a necessary question, because the goal of electing Democrats is a means to the end of better policy outcomes and those who, while with us in name, do not share our agenda, will not contribute to this.