Don't Blame the Kwik-E-Mart Man

A couple weeks ago, the national average price for a gallon of gas was at $3.07/gallon, up 64% from $1.87 one year ago. Yes, we are in the post-hurricane world of $3+ gas, and we even have a popular new villain to boot: the price gouging gasoline store owner, he who took advantage of scarcity and soaring demand to make a quick buck. A few media reports on a handful of such individuals caught cheating has angered consumers and lawmakers alike. Meanwhile, the big oil companies, realizing a way to deflect blame, have latched on to this idea as well.

I recall seeing just last week a full-page ad in the paper in which the oil companies, presenting a united front, sought to distance themselves from the price-setting gas station operators. The idea was "Hey, these gas prices aren't our fault. Blame the gas station attendants for hiking up their rates!" This of course conveniently fails to mention that the seemingly "independent" retail stations must buy their gas at the price they are charged by their suppliers.

A lead story in Sunday's Business section of the Washington Post further rejects the idea that gas station owners are the profiteers they've been made out to be. See the accompanying graphic for an explanation of how the price paid by consumers at the pump is distributed throughout the entire gasoline production system.

While consumers are paying about $1.20 more per gallon since September '04, gas distributors and retailers have seen their share rise only marginally (5%), from $0.17 to $0.178. So where's all the profit going to? Well, where else but...

• The oil companies. A year ago, they were collecting about $1 of each gallon sold. That number is up 46%, to about $1.47.
  
  
• The refineries. Here is the big winner--last year, they took $0.28 of every gallon. Their piece of the pie has grown substantially larger, now at about $0.99 per gallon, a 255% increase!

So while gas prices may have spiked recently, and remain too high for the public's liking, you can be sure of one thing. The inflated numbers on those billboard signs aren't just a result of greedy gas attendants out to make a quick buck!

Ohmy: The Real "Citizens' Band"

Today's San Francisco Chronicle reports on the growing popularity of OhmyNews, a Seoul-based online newspaper which runs stories submitted by thousands of "citizen reporters" in South Korea and around the world. Submissions are vetted by Ohmy's tiny staff of 54 editors, researchers, and professional reporters. Articles selected for publication (about 2/3 of all submissions) earn their author between $2 and $20 for each story used. Once published, articles featured on Ohmy's site each have their own message board for discussion. Articles well received by the public can even earn their author monetary tips from site readers.

Ohmy seems to me to be an unbelievably simple but terrific idea. This is blogging at its best. Isn't Ohmy essentially a huge group blog tamed by professional fact-checking? And what better way to engage the public in the news than by having the public set the agenda of the newspaper? "Every citizen is a reporter," is Ohmy's slogan, and by extension, an avid consumer of news. The results speak for themselves--Ohmy's average daily readership of 2 million far exceeds popular American blogs like DailyKos and Instapundit.

I think this kind of thing would be incredibly popular if implemented here in the United States because it would provide an avenue for young people to get involved. Certainly there are many young people in this country who have a lot to say but who don't have a means of getting their message across. Nearly three-quarters of Ohmy's citizen reporters are under 40, and a full 20% are college students.

None of this is to suggest that organizations like Ohmy can replace traditional media outfits, where the professional journalists who do their job for a living have far more resources available to them to cover stories as they occur. Most of the stories that get reported in Ohmy rely on stories that the professional media has already covered. Nonetheless, I see organizations like Ohmy as perfect vehicles to heighten public interest in news and current events, and encourage dialogue about the leading issues of the day. The goal of a true "Citizens' Band" is not to compete with the professional media, but to supplement it through the active engagement of the general public.

See related: OhmyNews (English edition)

In China, "Business as Usual" is Bad

The big story of the day, of course, is North Korea's decision to scrap its nuclear weapons program. Elsewhere, in Afghanistan, a moderately successful election was held despite Taliban threats and security concerns. Amidst the reports of these twin triumphs, however, is the story of a Chinese journalist recently sentenced to 10 years in prison for publishing a summary of the Communist Party's handling of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacres.

What makes this case unique is that the Chinese government enlisted Yahoo Inc.'s help in using Shi Tao's private email account as evidence against him. On Sunday, the Washington Post was blistering in its criticism:

"Over the past two decades, many have argued -- ourselves included -- that despite China's authoritarian and sometimes openly hostile government, it is nevertheless right to encourage American companies to work there. Their very presence has been thought to make the society more open, if not necessarily more democratic. If that is no longer the case -- if, in fact, American companies are helping China become more authoritarian, more hostile and more of an obstacle to U.S. goals of democracy promotion around the world -- then it is time to rethink the rules under which they operate."

-- WASHINGTON POST editorial (09/18/2005)

Earlier this summer, I was appalled to hear that Microsoft had cooperated with the Chinese government by making the words "freedom" and "democracy" banned on the Chinese version of the MSN Spaces blogging tool. From personal experience, I already knew that Google and Yahoo searches conducted in China were subject to filtering. Cisco Systems has already helped the Chinese government set up the most sophisticated Internet monitoring system in the world.

American companies are helping a repressive regime tighten control over its people. Why? As Anne Applebaum has noted, "If this isn't illegal, maybe it should be." She brings up the IBM-Holocaust connection to suggest that the companies enabling China today should think twice. In pursuit of the bucks, Microsoft, Yahoo, et al., have struck a devil's bargain that is at odds with our own national interest.

Legality aside, the immorality of it all is disgusting. We should be pushing for the increased liberalization of China, not helping to reverse it. In the future, China should not be able to impose anathematic conditions on our tech companies' services. Take it as is, or leave it, thank you very much. I'd sleep better at night knowing that we were not contributing to the setback of democratic progress in China. Just ask Shi Tao.

What They Don't Understand

Today, on the fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, I came back to a column written by Thomas Friedman a few weeks after the Twin Towers fell. The following excerpt contains the simplest and best statement of what makes America great, our flaws notwithstanding, and why the ideology of terrorism does not offer a viable future for the frustrated Muslim masses:

[The Islamic terrorists'] constant refrain is that America is a country with wealth and power but "no values." The Islamic terrorists think our wealth and power is unrelated to anything in the soul of this country -- that we are basically a godless nation, indeed the enemies of God. And if you are an enemy of God you deserve to die. These terrorists believe that wealth and power can be achieved only by giving up your values, because they look at places such as Saudi Arabia and see that many of the wealthy and powerful there lead lives disconnected from their faith.

Of course, what this view of America completely misses is that American power and wealth flow directly from a deep spiritual source -- a spirit of respect for the individual, a spirit of tolerance for differences of faith or politics, a respect for freedom of thought as the necessary foundation for all creativity and a spirit of unity that encompasses all kinds of differences. Only a society with a deep spiritual energy, that welcomes immigrants and worships freedom, could constantly renew itself and its sources of power and wealth.

Which is why the terrorists can hijack Boeing planes, but in the spiritless, monolithic societies they want to build, they could never produce them. The terrorists can exploit the U.S.- made Internet, but in their suffocated world of one God, one truth, one way, one leader, they could never invent it.

Lord knows, ours is hardly a perfect country. Many times we have deviated from the American spirit or applied it selfishly. But it is because we come back to this spirit more times than not, in more communities than not, that our country remains both strong and renewable.

America has made many missteps in the Middle East, and even today, our policies need to be revamped for both our benefit and for the benefit of their masses. Nonetheless, the Muslim public needs to vocally reject terrorism and not sympathize with Osama bin Laden & Co. Terrorism does not offer any constructive message or vision for the future. Terrorism, and continued blind hatred of America and Israel, is not an answer for the Arab countries. Terrorism is not going to solve chronic unemployment or enable political opposition or modernize economies. Terrorism delegitimizes the valid grievances that Muslims have.

Today, on the anniversary of one of the most horrific days in America's history, the fight against terrorism goes on. That fight is interminably connected with the struggle by the Islamic world to offer a better future for its people.

Race and Prejudice

In conversation this week with a fellow student at UMCP, I brought up the subject of the government's commendable decision to distribute $2,000 debit cards to Hurricane Katrina victims so that they can purchase food, shelter, and other essentials. To my surprise, he expressed skepticism that the policy would do any good. Why not, I asked? This student, whom I otherwise respect and well like, said to me (ensuing quotes recalled to the best of my memory) "Come on, you don't really expect these people to spend the money on food, do you? They'll just use it to buy booze!"

Give me a break, I laughed. If I'd been through all that they've been through this past week, I'd need a stiff drink too! My partner insisted, however, that he was not joking. "Think about it," he said to me, "They're black and they're poor. They're from the New Orleans ghetto. How do you think they got there in the first place? They're hooked on booze." Shocked, I realized he wasn't joking at all and my good humor deserted me. I vehemently refuted his offensive and ridiculous statement, and so ended the conversation.

Now you can say, yes, it's not a big deal. The fellow in question is definitely a nice and decent guy, and his views are definitely held by a minority of people on this campus and in this country. But that doesn't make it OK. It wasn't acceptable for former first lady Barbara Bush to say, as she did this past week, that owing to the fact that many Katrina victims were poor, the storm is "working very well for them."

All my life, I can remember being surrounded in a multi-cultural environment, even as my family moved up the rungs of the economic ladder. I'd always thought of racism as a relic discarded in the '60s, in much the same way I used to think sex discrimination was behind us after the '70s. We had the Civil Rights Era, I thought, and now we live in the Enlightened Era where surely no one in America holds on to those antiquated and poisonous notions of race. (Or religious discrimination either, but a post-9/11 world has shattered that belief as well.) Since coming to college last year, I've encountered, almost for the first time, people who have not had the benefit of exposure to many different kinds of people, and whose prejudices reveal it.

My high school, Montgomery Blair HS of Silver Spring, MD, was an amalgamation of 3,000+ white, black, Hispanic, and Asian students: seemingly every group was well-represented--white suburbia; English as a Second Language (ESL) immigrants; middle-class Asian children of immigrants; the majority African-American population of the area; gay, straight, or ambiguous; jocks, theater players, and dorks; rich, poor, or in between. We may not have all had the same circle of friends or known each other intimately, but we were all at least aware of the conditions each of us existed in, and we were brought together by the awareness of the common experience we were sharing.

I don't think it must have ever occurred to the guy I mentioned above that poverty is not indicative of slothliness and alcoholism. Some people--in fact, a lot of people that we don't give much thought to--work hard all their lives just to secure that bare minimum to get by on. It's easy to forget that while we're coasting on to our assumed future success while attending a high-priced university, we're the fortunate ones. Would that we were all so lucky!

Somehow, I understood just what Richard Cohen meant when he lamented that Chief Justice nominee John Roberts was "too perfect to know the people." He wasn't suggesting that Roberts should have lower educational qualifications or that Roberts was bigoted or anything like that. Cohen was referring to the obvious disparity between the lives of our elected officials and those of the majority of people they represent. There are in fact "Two Americas", as John Edwards would say. If we've learned anything from Katrina, it's that we musn't let the former get out-of-touch with the needs and concerns of the latter. The type of unfamiliarity I've seen displayed lately isn't just unseemly; it can be costly.

Katrina's Deep Impact

Hell hath no fury like Hurricane Katrina. A major metropolitan city, New Orleans, has been all but destroyed. The entire Gulf Coast looks like an A-bomb hit. When I see the pictures of dead bodies floating in the water, thousands of refugees stranded for days on end, and looting in the streets, I am beyond words--this is happening in America? So many thoughts go racing through my head.

I'm struck by the similarities and differences between this tragedy and the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, the international mega-disaster that claimed 200,000 lives. In the aftermath of the tsunami, I was honestly touched by the number of people who opened up their hearts and wallets because they cared about the plight of Third World villagers half way around the world. The day after New Year's, several friends and I stood outside local Giant grocery stores and collected nearly $2500 in donations. The main theme to arise immediately after the tsunami was that sense of collective generosity, action, and optimism.

Those same themes are certainly manifest in the nation's response to this latest tragedy, but Katrina, having struck here at home, has also hit a lot of raw nerves. Certainly, in the first days after this hurricane, anger more than anything else dominated the discussion. Why weren't preventive measures taken to guard against this disaster? What does it say about race and class problems in America that the vast majority of victims--the ones who were unable to evacuate beforehand--were black and poor? Why was the relief effort so slow and badly uncoordinated?

I'm oft critical of the media when they spend too much time on frivolous matters instead of doing their job, but in the past week I have to say that the news organizations really stepped up to the plate. The broadcast channels and newspapers all did an exemplary job at getting to the area and getting a very human and tragic story out to the American public. Indeed, the coverage was so personal and compelling that I couldn't help but notice the barely disguised anger in reports from Brian Williams, Anderson Cooper, and others. They were each wondering what the public has been asking for days: how is it that the news crews could get in but the relief crews were nowhere in sight?

Federal officials maintain that they were unaware of the severity of the disaster for a few days after Katrina hit. Unbelievable! Thankfully the press has been alert and unrelenting in its coverage of the relief effort. On his Friday night show, Bill Maher cheered that, at last, a press that had been enfeebled since 9/11 and the Iraq war seemed to have rediscovered the ability to ask tough questions and challenge the administration. Well, that's a lone spot of bright news.

There's not really anything to cheer about after Katrina. Preliminary estimates put the death toll at a staggering 10,000, or more than 3 times the casualties of the 9/11 attacks. Katrina is also estimated to have cost $100 billion in damages. The numbers are just a guess, but by any standard it is mindblowing to witness such utter destruction and chaos here in America. I am just thankful that I, unlike many people around the country, did not lose anyone in this tragedy. A friend of mine, though, is a sophomore at Tulane University in Louisiana. His school has been shut down for the semester and he has temporarily transfered here to College Park.

Most of Katrina's victims will not be able to pack up, relocate, and start anew. In the opening scene of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Gonzalo cries "Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground." It is a sentiment likely shared by thousands whose lives have been irrevocably altered. Friday, President Bush vowed that "New Orleans will rise again and be a greater city of New Orleans." It may take months for the city and the rest of that storm-ravaged area to recover, but I certainly hope Bush's promise comes true. America has responded to tragedy heroically in the past. Let's do so again.

Note: This post was adapted for a column in the September 7 issue of the Maryland Diamondback, also titled "Katrina's Deep Impact".