Gas prices

Gas in Chicago is pretty expensive -- about $2 / gal. for the cheap stuff (hey, even air costs at least 50 cents). But this is true only by US standards, as Andrew Sullivan reminds us. I take issue with his argument's basis on comparing US to European and Japanese gas prices. The US has a pretty massive domestic oil industry and proximity to ports and oil-producing regions results in price differentials even across the US. Josh Chaftez also talks about geography as a reason for this comparison being unfair. He writes:

Most places in Europe were built before the car was invented and are therefore navigable without cars (indeed, many are barely navigable with cars). The same goes for the Northeastern U.S. But I grew up in Houston, which is most emphatically a city built around the car. So is Los Angeles. So are a lot of cities in the Southwest and the West.

Moreover, it is true that the mass transit systems in these larger and (let's say) "western" cities are such that it is quite hard to get around without a car. San Francisco is really an "eastern" city -- it's not a sprawl like LA. If you include the metro area in "DC" (and let's be honest, if you picked up just the District and moved it to the middle of Kansas it would be a drastically different place -- example: no Tysons) it's a "western" city -- a sprawl. In sprawl cities mass transit is a hard thing to do. Boston and New York are the only cities in which I've felt that it's totally reasonable not to have a car. Even Chicago seems a little too big for it's transit system -- particularly if you live on the South Side.

My point is that Mr. Chafetz's argument is well-taken, and this conjecture is not too unimaginable:

A significantly higher gas tax would hit the working poor (and the working lower-middle class) hard in cities like those. In some cases, it might actually force people onto welfare, as driving to work becomes too expensive.

However, Dr. Sullivan's reasoning is good:

an easy way to help ease the budget deficit, increase our fuel efficiency, wean us a little off Middle East petroleum and generally help the U.S. economically and in foreign policy.

But also, he rightly says that:

the very idea of raising taxes on gasoline is regarded as so completely anathema you might as well propose nominating Osama bin Laden for president.

True, but that's the case for raising taxes on anything. I, of course, am the odd one out (apparently not 100%) because I'd favor an increased gas tax. Of course, I'll go on the record as saying that I've voted for a tax increase in the past. But an increased gas tax is good not because we've been taking it easy with artificially low gas prices, but primarily (in my mind) because it will produce innovation in fuel efficient vehicles, and force people to engage in more reasonable ground transit (buying fewer gas-guzzlers, taking public transit more often, &c.)

Strange in a few ways

There's a story today in The New York Times about a Buddhist monk who had his cloth bag stolen at a Starbucks in Manhattan. The first strange thing is that this was front-page (below-the-fold) news today. I could come up with so many better things to have been there, and I'm so confident of this, that I won't bother to suggest any. The other strange thing is that in the picture accompanying the article (on the front page of the print Times and the first picture on the website) you can see a couple kissing in the background (you need to click "enlarge this image" to see it). I feel like the stodgy New York Times wouldn't want a couple kissing on the front page... oh wait, unless it's on the Sunday edition, of teenagers, relating to an article about abstinence, and HUGE (like a few weeks ago). Anyway, the article has both a happy ending and this funny passage that shows my fascination by and the Times' somewhat paternal contempt (aw... look at the cute little Buddhists) for non-Protestant or Jewsih religions:

Venerable Kassapa, 41, is a forest monk in Sri Lanka. He usually lives alone or with a few other monks in rock-shelter huts, where he depends on the charity of villagers. He eats one proper meal a day, does not carry money, and devotes much of his celibate life to meditation, contemplation and the study of Buddhist texts. People often bow before him.

First of all, I like the idea of there being "forest monks" as opposed to, you know "mountain monks", "subterranean monks", "tree monks" or whatever else. Second, I like the addition of the sentence "People often bow before him."

Awesome.

More on Spain

I posted earlier about the attacks in Madrid and their victory-for-whom status. But there's another consideration which I hadn't thought of (in relation to these bombings in particular) before I read this editorial in an old issue of the Times that was in my bathroom. Unfortunately, it's now more than two weeks old, so you have to pay to read the whole thing, but you could probably find it on some sort of online archive for free if you're academically affiliated.

Anyway, the editorial talks about how Al Qaeda is appearing to be becoming less of a semi-centrally organized cell-based organization, but rather a bunch of cells that use the Al Qaeda name and its cause. This would be like making some bum car and calling it a "Ford" (wait... the Edsall...) just so people know it's a car, it takes you from place to place, it runs on gasoline, etc... Now, this is a somewhat symbiotic relationship. Al Qaeda has very little outlay for these groups -- all it provides is its name, and (to a greater or lesser extent) its mission. Daniel Byman gave a talk here at Chicago about "Al Qaeda as an adversary" and he talked about the group and its affiliates, their level of integration, participation, etc... He mentioned that Al Qaeda provides an infrastructure for other groups. You run a group that needs small weapons training -- well, you're brother-in-law's dentist once had coffee in Nicosia with a Qaeda guy who can get your people to a camp in Afghanistan (or wherever... things aren't like they used to be...) to get said training from Qaeda folks.

But these affiliations can go further than just resources. The really interesting idea here is the co-opting of the mission, ideals, techniques, and most importantly the "brand name" of Al Qaeda. It lends a sense of fear -- and thus legitimacy to your operations. You think Al Qaeda, you think of the group that got the US where it hurts -- you hear that the job was done by the Eastern Mohammadean Coalition of Jihadists, you don't care. The most interesting question is whether this will start to water down Al Qaeda. Will there be some botched ops by groups just using the Qaeda name? Will this anger the central core of Qaeda guys and cause infighting? Is all jihad good jihad? Things to think about....