It’s all Jimmy Carter’s fault
June 16th, 2008 at 02:15pm Pat Cunningham
His argument on this point makes no sense whatever, but Jim Cramer, the “Mad Money” screamer on cable television, SAYS our current energy crisis is attributable to Jimmy Carter having worn a sweater when he addressed the nation about energy issues in 1977.
Cramer says Carter “created a legacy. The legacy was, if we conserve, we’re wimps. If we’re wimps, we can’t get elected. … The darn cardigan sweater has cost us more energy independence.”
That suggests that Carter scoffed at conservation. But he didn’t. He did exactly the opposite. It was the Republican conservatives who cast Carter as a wimp for daring to suggest that Americans should cut back on energy consumption.
Consider this: Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof as at least a symbolic gesture of conservation — but Ronald Reagan had them removed when he became president.
In those days, the prevailing attitude among conservatives was that conservation was wimpy stuff preached by liberal Democrats. My, how they laughed at Carter.
They’re not laughing anymore, notwithstanding Jim Cramer’s idiotic mischaracterization of Carter’s message regarding energy.
Or have I failed to discern that Cramer clumsily misspoke and actually meant to mock those who dared cast Carter as a wimp? Could be, especially considering that Cramer began his remarks about Carter by suggesting that the former president had died.
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13 Comments Add your own
1. Kaus | June 16th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Jimmy Carter got the cart in front of the horse….he tells us to conserve after we already have a crisis…great forward thinkging Jimmy….THEN he was a wimp that exacerbated the Iran oil crisis by not reacting to regime change with the Shah…nice legacy he leaves. However, Reagan should have kept the reins on conservation, and he didn’t. But Pat wants to make Carter the great god of Energy Conservation….
2. hokumboy | June 16th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
God Bless Him. I can only dream as to what this country would be like if we’d have listened to Jimmy and John B. I’m sure there’d still be a great hoard of folks in denial and complaining about how conservation is for suckers and things like wind turbines ruin property values in SUVland. But I’m also sure we wouldn’t be worried about competing with China and India for our last few drops of fossil fuel.
Think of how things could be if we had gotten serious about this mess those 30 years ago.
3. Craig Knauss | June 16th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
I remember when Carter was president and he asked the states to reduce the speed limit to 55 to save gasoline. He also asked people to reduce the heat settings on their thermostats to reduce fuel oil and natural gas usage. That was 30 years ago. It made sense, but people laughed at him anyway, because back then energy was cheap and who really cared? Now, surprise of surprises, energy is no longer cheap and a lot of people are starting to do those same things. Doesn’t sound like it was backward thinking to me. It sounds like a lot of his detractors had their heads where the sun didn’t shine. And still do.
4. Kaus | June 17th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Craig…we were in the middle of an energy crisis when Carter was in office. His mandates were AFTER the fact, NOT forward thinking vision. A great leader is not reactionary….he plans ahead.
5. redrover | June 17th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Kaus writes:
“A great leader is not reactionary….he plans ahead. .”
So is that why Reagan sent Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam Hussein
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/shakinghands_high.wmv
and began US support for his crimes against Iran and his own citizens and his buildup of chemical weapons, he was planning ahead?
Or was Reagan not a great leader?
In my opinion, Tolstoy had it right about the relationship between leaders and their people and how history happens.
Here’s a pretty good synopsis of Tolstoy’s views:
“Tolstoy had a very different theory of history. Tolstoy believed great leaders are puffed-up popinjays. They think their public decisions shape history, but really it is the everyday experiences of millions of people which organically and chaotically shape the destiny of nations — from the bottom up.
“According to this view, societies are infinitely complex. They can’t be understood or directed by a group of politicians in the White House or the Green Zone. Societies move and breathe on their own, through the jostling of mentalities and habits. Politics is a thin crust on the surface of culture. Political leaders can only play a tiny role in transforming a people, especially when the integral fabric of society has dissolved.”
SOURCE:
Heroes and History
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: July 17, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/opinion/17brooks.html
Tolstoy writes about this at length in his War and Peace. Here’s just one quote from that work on that topic:
In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.
6. Craig Knauss | June 17th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Kaus,
I’m glad to see you’re an expert on this, as well. Did you Google it like you get all your information? At least Carter reacted, and did so quickly. GWB has not. And the “energy crisis” was contrived. Gas prices were low, so the oil companies stopped delivering oil until the prices went up to where they wanted them. There were dozens, if no hundreds of oil tankers waiting off the coast for permission to unload. When the gas prices went up to about 43 cents per gallon, the ships unloaded. And the crisis was over. Amazing. So Kaus, don’t try to snowjob me. I was there.
In case you haven’t noticed, gas prices have been rising steadily since 2001 and GWB’s only response was to fill the Strategic Oil Reserves with record high price oil. What a plan! Or was that part of Cheney’s secret Energy Plan?
7. Kaus | June 17th, 2008 at 9:08 am
The energy crisis was contrived when Jimmy took office…but he didn’t help himself with the fall of Iran, which exacerbated the situation. You don’t need to bring Bush and Reagan into your argument however….my point was that any leader would ask us to conserve energy AFTER there is an energy crisis….contrived or real.
I was there too Craig…and there was plenty of oil. Carter had both scenarios (contrived and real) and bungled both of them.
By the way…the Government taxes oil companies a percent of profit don’t they? So when prices go up and demand stays constant, the government wins! They make even more money to pay politicians and ear marks.
Bow down to your Jimmy-God whilst the rest of us focus on the real solutions to the energy crisis.
8. Craig Knauss | June 17th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
First, I must apologize. After I posted, I realized I was talking about the contrived shortage of 1973, during the Nixon administration. That’s when the tankers sat until the prices went up. There were reports of gas lines across the country, although I didn’t notice much of that while living in Champaign-Urbana. You were talking about the “actual” crisis of 1979 which was the result of the Iraq-Iran war. It’s effect was only a few percent of overall crude oil, however the speculators pushed the price way up. At that point OPEC stepped up production to reap the profits. Then, I was living in Wheaton and I don’t remember too many gas lines.
A bigger concern is the 2008 fuel crisis. Prices have been rising steadily since at least 2002. In classical “law of supply and demand” economics, if either supply or demand are manipulated, price is affected. But in this case the supply is essentially constant. Price is being ramped upward until demand is adversely affected. This will continue until people start to conserve, i.e., Billy Bob and Irma Jean learn to park the 1-ton pickup and WALK down to the mailbox. It’s slowly starting to happen, but don’t hold your breath.
I also remembered the contrived shortages when the Venezuelan oil workers went on strike (the prices went up within 24 hours) and the great Northeast power outage. In the first, the prices went up at the pump on gas that was already there. In the second, prices went up due to the “loss of refining capacity”. They never mentioned the loss of consumption that went along with it. In either case, the price went down by only a portion of the increase.
Carter may have been ineffectual in resolving the 1979 “crisis”, but at least he tried to get people to do something to conserve. The current administration hasn’t done anything that I’ve been able to discern.
BTW: The last time I was in Norway, about 2000, gas was over $4 per gallon at Statoil stations. (Norway is an oil-surplus country. They can’t begin to consume what they produce.) So $4 per gallon in 2008 isn’t that bad for us.
9. kaus | June 17th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Craig… Craig….”at least he tried”….”to get people to conserve”….weak argument.
Getting people to conserve happens via Capitalism…price goes up…people conserve. Very basic in a capitalist world. No need to deify Carter like Pat did in this blog.
I heard Obama-little-jimmy today….let the price of oil go up, don’t drill off shore or up North. A great resource that would create jobs, create income for the USA deficit, compete with China….instead Obama wants to tighten our belts some more….
Poor vision. Why not drill for oil, sell it, tax it, and look for alternatives at the same time?
10. Craig Knauss | June 18th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Kaus, Kaus, Kaus,
You still haven’t told me what BUSH has done to help. And it happened on his watch. I’m waiting. And I’m sure it will be a long wait.
11. kaus | June 18th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
1. It didn’t just happen on Bush’s watch. This has been in the making for 30 years.
2. The Democratic congress has to take some initiative besides Nationalizing the oil industry, and threatening additional capital gains taxes. Sooooo creative aren’t they?
3. My argument has NOTHING to do with Bush, it was about Carter, so stay on topic. Carter served only one term for good reason…he was not qualified.
12. Craig Knauss | June 18th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Still haven’t answered my question, have you Kaus? This crisis IS on Bush’s watch, and so far he has done nothing to remedy it. Apparently it’s perfectly OK to ream Carter, who was president 30 years ago, but it’s not OK to discuss Bush who is president now. Carter may not have been effective in achieving his goals, but at least he gave it an honest effort. One more time: What has Bush done?
And Carter wasn’t qualified to be president? Bull—-! Maybe you should look in the Constitution and see just how few qualifications there are for president. How do you think we got Bush? He certainly wasn’t a business success. And his governorship was mediocre at best.
BTW: Just who are you to chastise anyone else about staying on the subject? You deviate from the thread topics more than anybody. Practice what you preach.
13. Kaus | June 19th, 2008 at 8:45 am
1. You can be critical of Bush…Again, I’m not here to defend him. But tell me what the Democratic House has done to offer up bills on the subject
2. I guess you are right regarding qualifications…
3. “Carter gave it an honest effort”…how do you know? So what. Still no foresight…merely reactionary
4. “You didn’t stay on subject”…I believe I did in this particular thread…but guilty on previous accounts.
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