Hank Kalet

There are few things likely to be more effective in reducing our energy consumption than conservation. We can search for new fuels, spend millions trying develop clean coal technology, drill off the coast to lessen our reliance on foreign oil, but unless we find a way to cut down on the fuel we use, it is unlikely to matter.

President Obama seems to understand this. His administration unveiledplans for higher fuel-efficiency standards plans for higher fuel-efficiency standards that will “mandate an average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025” and are designed to

increase the pressure on auto manufacturers to step up development of electrified vehicles as well as sharply improve the mileage of their mass-market models through techniques like more efficient engines and lighter car bodies.

Current rules for the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, program mandate an average of about 29 miles per gallon, with gradual increases to 35.5 m.p.g. by 2016.

The standards already have been criticized by Republicans who are referring to the Environmental Protection Agency as the Employment Prevention Agency because of its role in the creation of the new standards.

But the increase in the CAFE figure is long overdue. The Union of Concerned Scientists has been pushing for an increase for years and called the new standards “one of the biggest actions ever taken to reduce U.S. oil use and a huge step on the path toward halving the country’s projected consumption within 20 years.”

“This is truly a watershed moment. Twenty years from now we’ll be looking back on this as the day we chose innovation over stagnation,” said Michelle Robinson, director of UCS’s Clean Vehicles program. “These standards will protect consumers from high gas prices, curb global warming pollution, cut our oil use, and create new jobs in the American auto industry and around the nation.”

The UCS says the standards will

• Cut oil use by as much as 3.1 million barrels per day by 2030 – roughly the amount we import from the Persian Gulf and Venezuela combined;
• Save consumers $8,000 over the life of a model year 2025 vehicle, compared to the average vehicle on the road today, even after paying for fuel-saving technology; and
• Reduce U.S. global warming pollution by as much as 570 million metric tons in 2030, the equivalent of taking a third, or 85 million, of today’s cars and trucks off the road for an entire year.

There is a potential loophole — “inclusion of a critical midprogram review period” sought by the auto industry.

The review, to be conducted at the end of the decade, is meant to assess the progress made toward achieving the 54.5 m.p.g. goal. The standard could then be altered if the manufacturers are struggling to meet the new guidelines.

One industry trade group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said a “rigorous midterm review” was necessary to determine how consumers reacted to new models that had better mileage but might be more expensive.

“Compliance with higher fuel-economy standards is based on sales, not what we put on the showroom floor,” the alliance said in a statement.

Even with teh loophole — which won’t hit until around 2019 — it is likely that the auto industry will at least make an effort to get the job done and we’ll be saving a significant amount of oil and reducing our emission of carbon into the atmosphere.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

I’ve been trying to think of what I can say about The Dark Knight Rises aside from that it was a fun ride with some good scenes. It is a good film, but not a great film. It features odd plot twists and a boatload of action, though it slows in some spots.

It is thrilling and completely implausible (the cops keep walking into traps) and, unlike The Dark Knight, wholly dependent upon having seen the first two films of the franchise.

But that’s not what I’ve been thinking about. What strikes me about the film – and about the Dark Knight series overall – is its defense of elites and noblesse oblige. This is not foreign to the super hero genre, which posits the notion of a world in disarray and in need of a singular, super-powered individual to step up and save it.

What separates the Dark Knight Batman series from the other examples of the genre – The Avengers, Iron Man, the earlier (and inferior) Batman films of the ’90s – are several things: Bruce Wayne’s background (not only s he the scion of a rich family, but his father makes it clear during the first film that the family’s wealth creates an imperative for them to do things to help others) and this final film’s use of elements of the French Revolution (the citizen trials of the rich for their crimes against society presided over by the villain from the first film makes it clear that the director views the trials and the complaints as illegitimate).

One exchange stands out for me. Bain, one of the film’s chief villains, has taken over the stock exchange. Outside, the exchange’s manager implores the police to act, saying that it is not just the exchange’s money but everyone’s. A police officer responds that it isn’t his – he keeps his in his mattress – which leads the exchange manager to reply that the cop’s cash will be worth a whole lot less if the theft is successful.

It is a version of the argument the financial industry used in 2008 as the mix of misdeeds and bad bets joined to crater the economy. The bailouts followed, likely preventing further damage, but they came without any cost to the people who engineered the original failure.

This is pretty typical of the film’s overall argument. The Nolans consistently counter populist claims with elite defenses. In fact, The Dark Knight Rises posits a world in which elites do battle, in which only the elites have a say (the closest we get to an exception to this rule is with Catwoman and Blake, though they have little impact on the final outcome, which is all Batman).

I guess my reaction to the film is consistent with my reactions to all three films in the franchise and my reaction to most superhero films (aside from the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man), which can be boiled down to this: I enjoy the adrenaline rush, but I abhor the politics.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Four years ago, speakers attacked Obama for his lack of administrative experience, his history as a community organizer and his celebrity, while lauding the virtues of the small town (as opposed to the big city). They skirted the issue of race.

Not this year. Expect some ugliness this week as the Republican convention unfolds — thanks to the Romney campaign’s use of race to try to sway white voters to his side. Thomas B. Edsall explains:

The Romney campaign is willing to disregard criticism concerning accuracy and veracity in favor of “blowing the dog whistle of racism” – resorting to a campaign appealing to racial symbols, images and issues in its bid to break the frustratingly persistent Obama lead in the polls, which has lasted for the past 10 months.

The result is a campaign run at two levels. On the trail, Paul Ryan argues that “we’re going to make this about ideas. We’re going to make this about a positive vision for the future.” On television and the Internet, however, the Romney campaign is clearly determined “to make this about” race, in the tradition of the notorious 1988 Republican Willie Horton ad, which described the rape of a white woman by a convicted African-American murderer released on furlough from a Massachusetts prison during the gubernatorial administration of Michael Dukakis and Jesse Helms’s equally infamous “White Hands” commercial, which depicted a white job applicant who “needed that job” but was rejected because “they had to give it to a minority.”

The party’s original list of speakers — seven birthers — indicates that these recent attacks are part of a larger party strategy. As Carlos Galindo wrote in the Tuscon Citizen, the party has

bet it all on a platform of fear and racism. They have actually convinced many blue collar workers to go against what’s best for them. They use code words and phrases like “the welfare president”, “socialist”, “European style governing”, “the Kenyan”, and the most common phrase, “I want my America back.”

Their America? That’s a key phrase, because the romanticized past is really a white past, one that consigned blacks to segregated neighborhoods and segregated schools, that made some jobs off-limits to blacks and severely limited the ability of black Americans to prosper.

The nation has huge problems, but taking us back to a time of legal segregation and discrimination will not fix them.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean. 
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here. 
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Add caption

Gov. Chris Christie has been lauded in some circles as a straight talker. He tells the truth, these folks say (and before you accuse me of putting up a straw man, just read all the laudatory clips written about him in the past).

But the reality is Christie is a fraud. I’ve made this point before, but with the governor set to give the keynote speech in Tampa at the Republican National Convention, and the national press about to fawn all over him, the critique had to be made by someone with a national reputation. Enter Paul Krugman.

Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist and The New York Times’ most effecxtive op-ed writer, deconstructs Christie in a scathing column that makes it clear that he “talks a good (and very loud) game about his willingness to make tough choices,” but has followed through in a very selective manner.

The governor was willing to cancel the desperately needed project to build another rail tunnel linking the state to Manhattan, but has invested state funds in a megamall in the Meadowlands and a casino in Atlantic City.

Also, while much of his program involves spending cuts, he has effectively raised taxes on low-income workers and homeowners by slashing tax credits. But he vetoed a temporary surcharge on millionaires while refusing to raise the state’s gasoline tax, which is the third-lowest in America and far below tax rates in neighboring states. Only some people, it seems, are expected to make sacrifices.

Christie would never admit to any of this and I suspect that the national press will fail to notice any of it — which is what they did when Christie Whitman became a national darling in the 1990s. So, expect the hero worship to continue.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swfLet’s take Mitt Romney at his word and assume that his joke about birth certificates was just a joke. Let’s assume that there was no animus behind it, that it was not a calculated “dog whistle” comment designed to be red meat for the base.

Even if you assume all of this, the bad joke should still alarm people. As with his critique of British Olympic preparations while on a trip through Britain, it is clear as Jonathan Alter is saying right now on Martin Bashir’s show on MSNBC, as I write this, that Romney is gaffe-prone and inept. He cannot go off script. Is that the man we want in the White House, dealing with allies and enemies alike?

Personally, I don’t buy that this was just a gaffe. He’s talked repeatedly about how the administration is not patriotic enough, and has been willing to hang with some of the most racist elements of his own party. 

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.  
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.  
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.