International Politics

	Vol. 226 No. 5
JOHN MCCAUGHEY, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, WASHINGTON

Rumors and initiatives. A panicky telephone call from my friend the lobbyist at ExxonMobil. What do I know, he demands, of a pending bill by Sen. Edward Kennedy (Dem. – Mass.), and Nancy Pelosi, the rather unpleasant, much-disliked minority leader from California, to impose a swinging “windfall profits tax” on the “obscene” profits currently being made by oil majors? Cautiously, I tell him that I have no inside knowledge but that I have reason to believe that it may well be true.

This is all very gratifying, because the rumor is one that I had started myself, only two evenings previously at the bar of the National Press Club on 14th Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. It is similar to a rumor that we started during one previous energy crisis, that Sen. John Kerry (Dem. – Massachusetts) was introducing a bill to repeal Title II of the Third Law of Thermodynamics, which readers versed in physics will recall outlines the limits on percentages of energy that can be obtained from fuel sources.

The law, we had Kerry say, was invented or promulgated by Francois Say, a Frenchman, and imposed “outmoded and Frenchified concepts” that were depriving American consumers of much-needed energy. Hence, Title II had to be repealed by the Congress.

For all its implausibility, the story (despite being published on April 1) attracted a storm of attention among Capitol Hill staffers and took weeks to die out. This is proof of the fact that in Washington, a rumor is not merely a rumor but acquires a political reality and force of its own. Mercifully for politicians, most journalistic hacks are content to print tame rumors fed to them by press spokesmen and lack the initiative or brains to make up real or juicy rumors of their own.

Rumors aside, the other little-realized truth about Washington (certainly not realized by bi-annual crops of baby-faced congressmen) is that far from being a city where things get done, Congress is so constructed politically as to make sure that very little gets done.

No one appreciates this more than President George “Dubya” Bush and his advisors, which is why he flees to Camp David or to his Texas ranch at every opportunity. It was difficult not to sympathize with him when he complained recently that four years was enough to debate and pass an energy bill.

Trouble is, nobody in Washington, apart from the President and perhaps new Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, really wants a National Energy Bill. And the White House has got so many other major issues on its plate that energy is very low on the radar screen. Nor do the voters seem bothered. SUVs still howl around the Capitol Beltway, for all the world unconcerned by gasoline prices. So any energy bill this year faces a dubious future. Also, a roadblock to energy legislation is the disputed question of liability protection for MTBE manufacturers. 

True, there is some incremental action on Capitol Hill but mostly on the edge: vague moves on LNG siting, etc. Representative Richard Pombo (Rep. – California) is working on a North American Energy Freedom Act that promises energy self-sufficiency by 2025, a year in which the little-known congressman will be safely retired on a fat government pension.

But any energy bill for years has attracted so much special interest pork that even politicians do not want to be seen voting for the obesity. This year’s “earmarks” (jargon for giveaways added on to bills) were a record 14,000 and more, reports The Pig Book, published by Citizens Against Government Waste. Cost to taxpayers in fiscal 2005 was $27.3 billion, up 19% from FY2004.

Even the Republicans’ intelligent strategy to permit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) by including it in a budget bill, which is immune to filibustering, might fail if the Republicans, as they threaten to do, insist upon a simple majority vote to pass President’s Bush’s judicial appointees.

This so-called “nuclear option” would work, but the Democrats have threatened to retaliate by bringing Senate business to a standstill, incidentally torpedoing the ANWR legislation. Of course, the filibustering row is a typical Washington quarrel about nothing very much, a technique used by both parties for years. Older readers may even recall Jimmy Stewart’s classic filibuster in the 1939 movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Perhaps the most amusing moment came in a Washington Post public opinion poll on gasoline prices. Some 34% of those polled blamed President Bush for price increases; 23% blamed foreign oil producers; 19% blamed US oil companies. But an intellectually-heroic 11% blamed All of the Above.

Blogging. Washington is full of over-paid, under-employed lobbyists, lawyers, bureaucrats and congressional staffers, all with access to keyboards, and, consequently, blogging incessantly. Most of their output is boring beyond redemption but occasionally something notable comes along – any resemblance to the US Dept. of Energy is unintended:

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has been tentatively named Governmentium.

Governmentium has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of governmentium causes one reaction to take more than four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second. Governmentium has a normal half-life of three years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause some morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass. 

John McCaughey edits and publishes Energy Perspective, a Washington-based, fortnightly publication featuring in-depth coverage of major energy topics. Mr. McCaughey has written and edited for Irish newspapers, an international news agency, the London-based Financial Times and the U.S.-based Energy Daily newsletter, and contributed to many other newspapers. He regularly contributes to this column.