The liberal blogosphere was pretty much unanimous in its derision for Sarah Palin’s op-ed on cap-and-trade in yesterday’s edition of The Washington Post. But on one important question–whether Palin actually wrote the op-ed herself–there was disagreement.
From Ezra Klein, writing on the Post’s Web site:
It’s probably a bit kind to say that Sarah Palin “wrote” this. There are no words in all capital letters. There are no sports metaphors. There is nothing at all like “*((Gotta put First Things First))*.” The stylistic and grammatical tics on display in last week’s speech are totally absent. Sarah Palin signed her name to this. Or at least let someone else do so.
But at The Plank, Jon Chait comes to the opposite conclusion:
The op-ed was clearly written by Palin herself. It has that 9th grade, five paragraph essay style along with random bits of right-wing jargon sprinkled throughout in appropriate contexts. It is best read if you imagine that some of the lines were written to be delivered with winks.
Guess they’re not getting all their talking points hashed out on Journolist, after all.
Politicians, for the most part, don't write their own speeches. Even those who are gifted writers and speakers typically rely upon professional speechwriters to assist with drafts, revisions, wording, etc. You're not likely to convince me that a similar process doesn't occur with opinion pieces, especially those written for major newspapers.
The best evidence, such as it is, that Palin might have written the editorial herself is that, if given to her in that form by a staffer, it should have provoked the response, "You seriously want me to sign my name to this?" (It was published in the Post, so I guess I can add a snark, "Who do I look like? Charles Krauthammer? Fred Hiatt?")
#1 Posted by Aaron, CJR on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 12:14 PM
Hmmm .... I thought the editorial really hit the nail on the head …… but what do I know, I'm just a professional engineer with 22 years in energy/utility industry. That certainly puts me at a disadvantage to a group of 20-something lefty bloggers.
#2 Posted by Carl S, CJR on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 12:49 PM
Chicken and Rofls at Carl S! Also, Aaron has it dead on. Who cares if Palin wrote it? I'm no fan of hers, but I assume that many celebrity/public official op-ed pieces are ghost-written or at least ghost-edited, so why pick on her? Do Klein and Chait suppose otherwise?
#3 Posted by D.R. Foster, CJR on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 05:32 PM
Well, who do you work for, Carl? A company that plans on selling petroleum for the next 40 years, by any chance?
I mean, if you worked for a telegraph company in the 1890s, you might have praised editorials that argued telephones were frivolous and wasteful...
I'm just sayin'. You're an engineer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have no axe to grind.
#4 Posted by Hardrada, CJR on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 05:44 PM
Hardrada: No jackass, I work for Exelon. My only "axe" to grind is with morons who want to take us back to the 1890 with the most regressive regulator scheme I have seen come out of congress.
#5 Posted by Carl S, CJR on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 06:22 PM
Well fine then.
All I'm saying is that "I'm just a professional engineer" does not necessarily mean "I'm an anonymous online poster whose opinion on energy policy is wholly objective and disinterested."
Not saying anything about your specific situation, but you implied that you're more trustworthy than a blogger precisely because of your occupation.
God knows there are plenty of dishonest engineers and scientists who get paid by the George C Marshall institute to lie for a living. I prefer logical arguments to ethos appeal.
#6 Posted by Hardrada, CJR on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 07:03 PM
I'm an engineer as well, and I disagree with Carl S. regarding the reality of "supplying our own needs" simply because we can "tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil." That's not true, and everyone with an understanding of American energy needs and supplies knows that. Furthermore, Palin suggests it could be done without an impact on the environment. Which is also untrue. But maybe Carl S's company has invented the mythical clean coal, or magically eliminated the pollution due to oil spills.
#7 Posted by Judith, CJR on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 07:24 PM
Judith ... please be honest, you aint an engineer. In my 22 years in the nuclear industry (yes nuclear, no dirty coal or oil jackasses) I have spent time as an equipment owner, working in outage coordination and planning, project management, and long term dispatch and power planning.
What “Cap and Trade” will do is choke off fossil electric generation. Now, I know this gives throbbing hard ons to all the green types out there, but this will mean less electricity on the gird. Aside from the inevitable scarcity premium, the fees being levied on the utilities and IPP’s for the right to emit CO2 will drive electricity prices sky high.
Why am I so sure about this? Simply, we on the nuclear side are already investigating how we plan our outages (all of the for the foreseeable future) to not coincide with peak usage. We are also determining how we can make our units and our local grids more friendly to variable output power sources like wind. Doesn’t affect us directly, but with this administration being as anti-nuclear as they are, we won’t be able to easily expand our capacity to meet the shortfalls. With so much generation being taken off line, prices during peak summer months will go through the roof, meaning we will make truckloads of money which naturally will lead to charges of price fixing and gouging.
With electricity costing more …everything costs more. Food costs more, consumer products cost more, your utilities cost more, your education costs more, your health care costs more, etcetera, and for what? You know what happens when guys I work with hear the president talk about the “smart grid” or “green energy jobs” we all laugh our asses off … until remembering that this ass clown runs this country.
We in this country have an abundance of resources. We could produce all of our own liquid and gaseous fuel and we could do this with and acceptably low impact on the local environment. I guarantee that the longer we live under a “Cap and Trade” scheme, the more of our electricity is going to come from Mexico and Canada. Don’t believe me, look at California.
Yglesias and Drum’s may have gone to Harvard or Yale but that alone appears to be their only qualification and it isn’t much at that. I doubt they or their clones have ever had to work a fucking day in their lives, let alone manage and operate a multi trillion dollar infrastructure that reliably brings low cost electricity into every home, office, factory, school and store in America.
This is precisely Palin’s point. Continuing down this proposed route will cost us all in money and productivity and not add anything to either the environment or our energy independence. We will be fools for doing this.
#8 Posted by Carl S, CJR on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 10:09 PM
re: Carl S
"We could produce all of our own liquid and gaseous fuel and we could do this with and acceptably low impact on the local environment. "
Carl, that statement could not be further from the truth and I challenge you to find one credible energy expert who thinks the United States could produce all its own fuel... It's a ludicrous idea. The US contains less than 6% of the worlds energy resources and consumes over 4 times that amount (25% as of 2005). You do the math, but these are facts and you can reference them easily. I know you are infinitely more qualified to talk about energy than any of the liberal bloggers, but it took me literally 30 seconds to find multiple repudiations for your claim and back it up with numbers. So please, pretend you are a 20 something yr old blogger and go do a little research about the topics you profess to be an expert on.
And no one said that cap and trade would improve GDP or make energy cheaper for the masses... you need to get off that. We are doing this to help the environment, not to help Exxon. The United States has to be a leader in this regard before we can ask/demand that China and developing nations work to lower their emissions as well. You view the stimulus as generational theft... the rest of us think continuing to trash the environment is the true generational theft of our era.
#9 Posted by Alex J, CJR on Thu 16 Jul 2009 at 02:30 PM
Alex, you are right, I am infinitely more qualified to talk about energy than any of the liberal bloggers. Seeing as how you are spoon-fed your information from them it’s no surprise to see you conflagrate “energy” with “oil”. The US contains less than 6% of the worlds “proven” liquid petroleum reserves and uses nearly 23%. Just because “oil” is a form of “energy”, not all energy takes the form of oil. Had you spent 35 seconds instead of 30 you could have found multiple sources to correct this common ignorant statement and not looked like a jackass.
Higher fuel standards and oil shale production, for example, could displace every single barrel of oil we produce and turn us into a net exporter of oil. There is five times the amount of energy sitting just underneath the ground of the Green River formation than in all of Saudi Arabia. Granted, its several times more expensive to extract and process than the oil in the Gulf, but many companies from Shell to Exxon have demonstrated that it can be done profitably when prices are over $25/barrel. This issue, as always, is one of political hurdles, not technical or financial. Aside from shale, the United States sits on very substantial petroleum reserves off shore in places like the gulf of Mexico, Alaska and off the shore of California, but once again political considerations have hamstrung efforts to exploit this resource.
And I know several people at the API who could write thousands of pages on the potential of offshore gas hydrate reserves … but that can be saved for another day.
As for your ludicrous statement on cap and trade, it is being sold to the public as an engine of job growth as well as to “help the environment”. Our own president and the democrats in congress are out there on the stump nearly every day talking about the millions of “green jobs” that the “cap and trade” will create and how this will far offset and job losses in the “old economy”. Well its bullshit, and nearly everyone knows it.
So take some of your own advice and go do a little research about the topics you believe you have a relevant opinion on before coming to a public forum and making a fool of yourself.
#10 Posted by Carl S, CJR on Fri 17 Jul 2009 at 12:00 PM