Opinion: In today’s pages: Energy policy, bailouts and fires
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The Times editorial board is steeped in the presidential campaign today. In the latest installment of its ‘Position papers for the next president’ series, the board bemoans the politically expedient energy policies offered by both John McCain and Barack Obama:
The financial meltdown of recent weeks hasn’t just overshadowed the energy crisis, it has eased it in the short term -- gasoline prices have fallen because oil traders fear that demand will shrink in a global recession. Yet meeting our energy challenges will remain among the most important concerns of the next president. That’s why it’s doubly disappointing that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has a responsible energy plan. In pandering to voters in swing states, both have backed dangerous, dirty energy sources in contradiction of their own principles.
The board also critiques the candidates’ latest proposals for stimulating the economy, as well as the Bush administration’s plan to invest directly in struggling financial firms:
The new approach is a much more direct and efficient way to provide more cash for banks to lend. In theory, that should ease the credit crunch that has been so damaging to the economy. Still, the plan seems to have been thrown together just as hastily as previous efforts, leaving gaping loopholes.
Over in Op-Edville, civil rights attorney Connie Rice decries the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments that she hears ‘embedded’ in the rhetorical attacks on Obama. Columnist Tim Rutten takes issue with the tut-tutting that always seems to follow a destructive wildfire in the Los Angeles basin. Author Joshua Kendall salutes the unifying accomplishments of Noah Webster Jr., whose 250th birthday would have been tomorrow, had he taken better care of himself. And scholar Anne Stuhldreher defends the controversial pay-to-learn incentives offered at 59 inner-city New York schools.