Say It Ain't So!

The second-biggest loser in Ted Kennedy's tragic turn of fate is Deval Patrick, who, thanks to a 2004 law change designed to prevent Mitt Romney from nominating John Kerry's replacement to the Senate, gets to do nothing but sit back and cast his one stupid vote just like the rest of us schmucks.

Take the rumor that Uncle Ted would like to pass his seat to wife Vickie a la Sonny Bono or Jean Carnahan for what it's worth. Either way, I want to doubt that it's possible, but I have this gnawing, groaning pain that says it could.

Imagine the scene: one one side, a pack of feuding vultures. Marty Meehan, Chris Gabrielli, Tom Reilly, and God knows who else. Mike Capuano? Bill Delahunt? Barney Frank? You have more chances to run for POTUS than an open senate seat in Massachusetts, and barring the unlikely (an Obama cabinet post?), Jawn Kerry has at least two more terms in him. Hey, I like Ogonowski a lot, but if he breaks 45% he's doing great, and getting from 45 to 50.1 is like crossing the Pacific ocean in a rowboat. But I digress.

On the other side, you have the regally-fading presence of Ted Kennedy, Lion of the Senate, and his Faithful and Forebearing Wife. Yeah, I know, wattaloadashit. But that's what you're going to get. Just so you realize, this thing is going to be covered like the death of Pope John Paul II, complete with waving from balconies and puffs of smoke. Heck, the sympathetic side of me says the Kennedys deserve to have at least one son die slow, old, and in bed.

In any event, none of the above will dare to bury Caesar until he's dead, but the minute he's gone, all hell will break loose. Against that backdrop Vickie's quiet dignity might still bring in the votes, but I wouldn't bet on it. The calculus ahead is gruesome yet fascinating. My guess is, if Vickie really wants the seat, and Ted really wants her to have it, he resigns soon to force the election to occur while the odds of him still being alive are good. I've always thought that Ted Kennedy would be more likely to leave the Capitol office building in a hearse than a moving van, and for a man who's made politics his life as much as he has, what better way to go than taking one more lap around the track?

Peak Paranoia

This FT story was linked on Drudge this morning as "oil futures near 130" but by the time I clicked through the headline said $140. Perhaps later this week, or today, it can reach $150. Peak Oil, until quite recently denounced as the sort of thing that you hear from people who grind axes about the JewsInternational Bankers and the Bilderberg Group and how they are shifting their savings into Krugerrands. But, just as I now regularly hear people making mid-six figures speculate about how the world is really run by richer bastards than them, the Peak Oil meme has gone mainstream.

The problem today is not the supply of oil--gasoline inventories in the US are at their highest levels in years, and imports have actually declined for several months now and are forecast to continue doing so for the next five years. The problem is honest information, the supply of which is never high, and is currently almost nonexistent. We don't trust Wall Street, we don't trust bankers, and we certainly don't trust Washington.

T. Boone Pickens is quoted in that article as saying that the world demand is for 87m BBLs daily while production will not exceed 85. People assume that this means disaster and chaos will necessarily ensue. Upon reading that, two things came to mind. First, that is not quite like saying there are ten zombies approaching, and we have a shotgun with only eight shells. The overwhelming majority of oil consumption is for energy which is far more substitutable than it is assumed to be.

But more importantly, why shouldn't T. Boone Pickens try to scare the shit out of people as much as possible? A friend of mine happens to be a pilot on one of Pickens' jets and flew him up to Boston a few months ago. Pickens asked what the price of jet fuel at Logan was, and my friend remarked that it had just broke through seven bucks a gallon. "Well," Pickens said, "I hope it goes to $12." I'm not saying that Pickens doesn't know far more about the dynamics of the oil business than I do, I'm just saying that he has one of the strongest incentives known to man to present the situation in the worst light possible.

I'll reserve my strongest disdain, however, for the Democrats who are, dishonestly or foolishly, trying to play both sides of the issue. On one hand, a consensus has formed that energy independence is a Good Thing, and with this, there's a strong sense that renewable/environmentally-superior forms of energy are our best bets. On the other, we see Reid, Pelosi, Obama et. al. crying for the heads of oil companies for 'artificially inflating the price of oil.' Silly industrialists, don't they know that's the government's job?

Bottom line, if you believe that energy independence and environmentally-friendly fuel sources are strategically important, then high oil prices are an unalloyed good. I realize that the Democrats would strongly prefer that the federal government raise the price of gas by a buck a gallon through taxes so that they can dictate what substitutes ought to be researched, but even assuming that this process was completely straight pool--I hesistate to write that for fear of inducing fatal hilarity--there is simply no way that it will happen as efficiently as it is right now. I have dealt with businesses that were once bringing in hundreds of millions a year in revenue and are now struggling to get above ten. If oil is indeed running out, that is what the oil companies will become, and it is a well and truly pathetic sight. The fear of that future will do far more to spur ExxonMobil in new directions than anything the government can do.

More to the point, nothing concentrates the minds of consumers and entrepreneurs half so well as the price of a stupid commodity going through the roof. For the past few decades no one with half a brain or more went into the energy business because it was about as dull as the postal service. Oil made for such cheap energy that looking for alternatives was a mission only for fools and idealists. Now even guys like me are starting to wonder whether maybe finding new ways to produce and manage energy is the place to go. I still think oil may yet see $200--and it could happen before this Christmas--but I think that will be the last hurrah.

I'm a Loser, Baby...

Give me a break. Tufts' (my alma mater) commencement speaker this year was Meredith Vieira? I mean, come on, Bryant [Frickin'] College got George H.W. Bush, and the best we could do is a professional leg model and TV chatterbox who hosts a show that nobody under the age of 40 has ever watched once in their lives? Were Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Star Jones booked?

This was preceded by my 10th reunion, held at the Joshua Tree in Davis Square, which achieved a certain sort of platonic perfection: people I couldn't stand 10 years ago, hanging out at a place I avoided like the plague 10 years ago. Having attended the 5th, which reminded me of nothing less than a trip to the dentist's, I decided to sit this one out and regretted it not a bit.

Like Hope for Apathy

Watching Joe Keohane at Boston Magazine is a bit like seeing Dita Von Teese do the Today show: wonderful to see a talented person reach a wider audience, but sometimes you really lose something in the (admittedly necessary) vanillification. His column this month is a case in point.

I was going to try and start by making the point that young people today are choosing independent volunteerism over engagement in electoral politics because it's more fun. After all, you get to work with people even younger than you, and maybe meet sociopolitically simpatico folks of the gender you find appealing. A city council election, on the other hand, means banging on doors, being told to go bleep yourself, and hanging out at every senior citizen's center in the district. But that would be missing the point, even if it would be fun to make.

What Joe's column hints at, but for some ineffable reason flinches from saying flat-out, is that there really isn't any reason for anyone to give a high hoot in hell about local elections. Boston's political history isn't storied for its resemblance to the Athens of Pericles, but to the Italy of the Medicis. Like Iraq in the waning days of Saddam, there is an opposition to the Menino administration, but it's fractious and petty and will shatter into a Hobbesian nightmare the minute Hizzoner's unifying force is removed.

Every election year I get papered by every Finnehan and Bomboza running for office, and time and again, I find myself struggling to understand why I should bother. I understand why the Finnehan-Bomboza race matters a great deal to Finnehan and Bomboza, but for my part, I don't see any difference whether Finnehan's or Bomboza's buddies are the ones who get jobs. I've been a caustic critic of Menino at times but to his credit, he's at least repaid the city for investing him as Dictator by holding slightly-more-than-petty corruption at bay to a degree that is simply remarkable.

And there is the baseline competence. Sure, that Deval fellow sounded awfully inspiring 18 months ago, but who wouldn't happily hot-swap him right about now for Chris Gabrielli or Tom Reilly? Menino rhetoric soars like a beagle, he is about as elevating as a footstool, but my trash gets picked up just as consistently as the fuckers tow my car, the roads eventually get plowed, and crime is some other neighborhood's problem. If I want to be entertained by politics, I can watch the West Wing or the O'Reilly Factor, but when it comes to city government, I don't want artists, I want plumbers.

Come to think of it, maybe I do like Menino after all....