And Ramesh Ponnuru Flames Rod Dreher

Dreher's crime? Worrying about the interaction of industrial air pollution with his kid's asthma. Real Republicans, you see, don't have kids with asthma--or, if they do, live full-time year-round in places with pristine air like Jackson Hole or Aspen.

Nice friends you have, Rod:

The Corner: OH, COME ON [Ramesh Ponnuru]: Right, that's what I'm saying: Voters' concerns about their kids don't matter. To heck with the kids! And from now on, let's only say things on the Corner that focus-group well! I'd be embarrassed to post an email on my side of this debate that was so silly. Posted at 06:18 PM

RE: POLLUTION CONTD [Rod Dreher]: Good grief. This is the last post I'll make on this matter, but here’s something a Cornerite wrote to me within the hour: "As a Californian I am all too aware that in choosing a Republican I am also choosing someone who will make the environment worse, and I suspect if the Democrats cleaned up their own act it wouldn't take me much because of this to switch parties. A cogent environmentalism almost certainly would help revitalize the party in my state, and yet they refuse to do so, to the harm of us all. Indeed, Mr. Ponnuru seems to miss your point entirely. You are bringing your son into this debate because that's what voters do. We vote according to our interests, and for Mr. Ponnuru to say, "leave your son out of the debate" he is basically saying to all of us what we care about does not matter. He may win the logical argument on such points, but the Republicans will lose elections if they keep such up, just as they have lost so much in California." Posted at 06:13 PM

POLLUTION, CTD. [Ramesh Ponnuru]: Alright, Rod, I'm disqualified from commenting further on this issue. I don't have a child with asthma, which I guess confers automatic expertise on environmental policies. And I'm not an expert, as your correspondent suggests, on the topography or air flow of Dallas, on the manufacture of cement, etc. I guess that you are an expert on these things? I'm sorry I wasn't able to glean that from your posts. Posted at 05:34 PM

I HATE TO PILE ON [Jonah Goldberg]: But aren't all politics local? Actually, I don't think all politics are local. But I do think all local politics are local. I don't know squat about the cement factories south of Dallas. But, is it really so absurd to imagine that if there was a Democrat running whatever committee Joe Barton runs or holding whatever seat he holds that maybe those cement factories would still be there? Maybe those cement factories have been there a long time? Even when Democrats controlled the state or that seat? I'm just at a loss as to how this so obviously translates into a national "good" Republican versus "bad" Republican issue, let alone a sweeping insight into national governing ideologies. Aren't there smokestacks in some Democratic districts too? Maybe it's because I'm in the Beltway bubble. Actually, my bubble is much smaller and in fact resides within the Beltway bubble. It's kind of cool-looking. Posted at 05:24 PM

RE: POLLUTION [Rod Dreher]: Ramesh, I live with an asthmatic child, so this is not an abstract situation for me. Which is the point I was trying to make: there is a direct connection between my sick child and polluting industries located south of my city, industries whose practices are staunchly defended by a Republican congressman. There are a lot of sick kids (and adults) in north Texas, which suffers from a high rate of respiratory disease. GOP candidates can mouth boilerplate all they want, but we need Republicans like Judge Keliher and other local GOP officials here in Dallas County who are actually doing something about the problem. Here's an e-mail I just got from a veteran NRO-nik who is a Texan and a conservative: "It seems to me that Ramesh is, like many, talking in generalities. Does he know anything about the Dallas area's topography? Air flow? Does he know anything about the manufacture of cement, particularly the particulates it releases? Does he know anything about the burning of hazardous waste as fuel in a facility not really intended to control it?

"Does Iain Murray really suggest that no restrictions at all is the magic silver bullet to this problem? That TXI and friends will really just fix all their problems if we just get government off their backs? There are several conservative solutions to this problem, including saleable credits for pollution. Let TXI buy other companies' unused credits, at market value, or simply require fewer of them.

"Incidentally, I'm not sure whether you were aware of the monstrous tire fire that happened several years (maybe even a decade) ago in Midlothian. Thousands and thousands of tires, all burning for 22 days, releasing tons of particulates and toxic material into the Dallas atmosphere. What came of those who let such a disaster happen? Is it really a Republican position that this is somehow "good for business"? "Good for America"?

"The reality is that I have a coworker in [north Dallas], a Baby Boomer with insanely liberal political tendencies. He has made a crack on more than one occasion that Joe Barton won't rest until every child in Tarrant, Dallas, Denton, and Collin counties has asthma. If there is no Republican to stand up and agree that the cement plants and tire-burning operations south of Dallas (in Ellis county, mostly)are bad --- environmentally and politically --- then the Democrats will eventually win on this." Posted at 04:21 PM

IT TAKES A CEMENT COMPANY TO GIVE KIDS ASTHMA? [John Podhoretz]: Then why are kids in The Bronx suffering asthma at record rates, Rod? There's almost no industrial pollution of any kind in New York City. In fact, I believe the rise in diagnosed asthma cases is a nationwide phenomenon of the past three or four decades, and nobody knows the cause. Except, it appears, a few judges in Texas, who got it all figgered out. I wasn't aware that degrees in epidemiology, cardiology, and pulmonology accompanied election to judgeships around Dallas, but now that I know, I'll be sure to consult your new friends about these matters. Posted at 04:11 PM

POLLUTION [Ramesh Ponnuru]: That bit about the "Beltway bubble" would be a low blow, Rod, but it's too cliched to land. Do Republicans need to do a better job in devising conservative environmental policies? Sure. But the research on pollution and asthma rates doesn't bear out the tight relationship you're claiming; the lessons you suggest that Republicans could learn from your new hero are banalities uttered by every single Republican politician in the country; and dragging your son into our debate doesn't really help matters. Posted at 03:40 PM

RE: GOP GREEN [Rod Dreher]: Come on, Ramesh, get outside the Beltway bubble and try to understand what Republican politics are like elsewhere. Here in Dallas, there are lots of Republicans who see Rep. Joe Barton, the powerful Republican Congressman who represents the district south of Dallas where these cement plants are located, as a major part of the problem. You can snicker all you want about the apparent obviousness of the issue, but the plain fact is those cement plants would have been forced to clean up their act if Rep. Barton weren't so obstructionist on the issue and dedicated to protecting that polluting industry--an industry that has a lot to do with the fact that so many people here in north Texas, including my son, suffer from respiratory disease. The childhood asthma problem here is incredible.

Where I live, there are plenty of summer days when authorities warn parents to keep their kids inside because of all the junk in the air. As Judge Keliher told me yesterday, Dallas wasn't like that when she grew up. Her predecessor as Dallas County Judge, a Republican named Lee Jackson, reportedly woke up to the importance of this issue when he saw girls' soccer teams here having to run to the sidelines to use their inhalers. I don't want my kids to grow up breathing this stuff. If Republicans in general--as distinct from local pols like Judge Keliher--are talking about clean air and water as a conservative issue, I'm not hearing them. And that's too bad. Posted at 03:27 PM

RE: GOP GREEN [Ramesh Ponnuru]: I completely agree with Dreher. Republicans should not sing the praises of air pollution. Instead, they should oppose it. They should point out that clean air is better than dirty air. Excellent ideas all; my guess is that some Republicans will see their political value. Posted at 12:45 PM

GOP GREEN [Rod Dreher]: Yesterday here at the Dallas Morning News, we met with a group of local folks that included Margaret Keliher, the Dallas County Judge (which means she's the top county executive in the Texas system). Keliher is a Republican, and she's also taken the lead in fighting for cleaner air in north Texas. Dallas has filthy air, in part because of cement plants just south of the city, and we're under federal government sanction to clean it up. In north Texas, the environment is not really a liberal vs. conservative issue, but a civic issue. I asked Judge Keliher yesterday why she, as a conservative Republican, has gotten active to fight industry for cleaner air. Now, Judge Keliher is very far from the kind of goo-goo Republican you find in--how to put this?--wetter climes. She replied that for one thing, it's about health, and health-care costs. For another, it's about creating a good business climate--companies don't want to move to a region that's got bad air and the health problems that go with it. And then there's the family values thing--Judge Keliher said that she's tired of seeing little children around here having to run to the sidelines during soccer games to use their inhalers. All of these are ways to think about the environment that resonate with conservative Republican voters. If I were sitting at the RNC in Washington right now, thinking about this fall's election, I'd spend a half hour on the phone with Judge Keliher and talk about this stuff. It's foolish to let the Democrats have this issue all to themselves--and by the way, enlightened environmentalists are starting to realize how foolish they've been to put all their hopes on the Democratic Party, and are now reaching out to conservatives. All to the good, say I. Posted at 12:09 PM

Comments

[Howard]

what i find most fascinating about this discussion is that it is an absolute certainty to ramesh and podhoretz that there is quite literally nothing that can be done about air pollution, indeed, that to be a republican it is essential to deny that air pollution is a problem or that it can be addressed.

[John Emerson]

Some Republicans just seem to be shitty people for whom every question is ideological, and who can't even be civil to their fellow Republicans.

What should happen is that Dreher should take toi bait and switch parties, but reality doesn't work that way with those guys.

[Robert Waldmann]

To me the most amazing thing is the confidence with which opposite views on a simple epidemiological question are stated. RD is sure that particulate pollution is associated with asthma. J Pod and RP confidently assert that it isn't. J Pod manages the amazing fallacy that if you think paticulates cause increased rates of asthma you must think they cause all asthma or, at least, variation in particulate levels explain all changes. Who did he think would be convinced.

Now I personally don't feel that I have an expert opinion on particulates and asthma so I decided to spend 10 seconds googling. go to Google, go to google scholar, type in "particulates" and "asthma" read the first abstract which came up. Conclusion, particulate pollution has a statistically significant positive association with asthma. Total time elapsed (including reading the abstract) about one minute.

a link
http://www.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=ENV&recid=3696910&q=&uid=787264866&setcookie=yes

obtained by this subtle search

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=particulates+asthma&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search

With google there is no excuse for ignorance. In particular no excuse for not checking claims before posting them on an online discussion. People used to having their own facts should be forced to deal with google.

One very impressive aspect of the NRO debate is the extreme intellectual dishonesty of RP pretending that RD had just argued that pollution is not good when he had argued that it is bad enough to justify tighter regulation, and JG pretending not to know that Democrats favor tighter pollution standards than Republicans. Also the nastiness is remarkable especially in RPs last jab.

[Julian Elson]

"Doesn't much of the discussion about pollution and the environment involve quasi-religious levels of intensity and quasi-religous needs for faith rather than reason?"

I think dearime has hit the nail on the head, although he probably doesn't realize it.

[Matt]

Brad,
I have nothing to say about what the fools at The Corner yammer about. They are too dumb to care about. But what I want to know is, how's the "tripple the cinnamon" experiment comming along? Any preliminary results?

[dearieme]

Doesn't realise it? Nail-head-hitting, c'est mon metier.

[DEEPGHETTO]

Hmmm I thought it was already established fact that the increase in asthma has been linked to pollution.As a matter of fact NPR had a story about a massive increase in respiratory ailments amoung children in the central valley because of burning of agricultural waste...Once again you can read for yourself that a wingnut doesn't give a damn about anything but pockets(theirs and the aristocracy).

[J Thomas]

Dearieme, I didn't see the comment that Julian Elson is presumably applauding, but I strongly suspect that what you didn't realise is that you are the nail.

[kharris]

The "I have a kid with asthma" spat is kinda fun to watch. These guys are coughing up opinions about everything under the sun on a daily basis, and can't even figure out that they are talking past each other. Dreher 's slice at politics is a voter behavior slice, in which his comment about his own situation makes perfect sense. Ponnuru wants to talk about politics and policy, in which personal anecdotes aren't all that legit. Ponnuru whines and hisses and complains – poor Ponnuru, trumped because he doesn't have a kid with asthma – but never recognizes that he and Dreher are talking in two different directions. Spitting at the guy across the table, rather than acknowledging what he is doing, seems a poor way to make progress here.

Those are pretty big blind spots. So why, again, are these guys pretending to be opinion leaders?

[Roger Albin]

Pollution is related to asthma but in complicated ways. Asthma is a chronc condition whose origin is inflammatory in nature. Air pollution does not cause asthma. Remarkably polluted, brown coal burning East Germany had a relatively low prevalence of asthma. The incidence of asthma probably has something to do with early childhood experience with infections and genetic predisposition.
But, and this is a big but, asthma exacerbations are clearly linked to air pollution. This includes New York City. Air pollution, particularly particulate emissions, are linked to excess mortality due to pulmonary disease. These NRO guys are ignorant, ideologically blinkered, stupid (because they didn't bother to do a bit of research), and callous.

[sm]

It starts with callous. Occasionally a personal ox gets gored and one of them is forced to reconsider the original callous position. Not all that unusual a human process, actually, but their initial attachment to callous self-centered "policies" (whatever looks good at the moment, rather) is unusually strong.

[Rod Dreher]

Just for the record, I never claimed in my Corner postings that the air pollution in Dallas causes asthma. I don't have the information to make such a claim. What I do know is that the crap the cement plants south of the city put into the air is a significant contributor to the horrible air pollution in the city -- and therefore to the difficulty my kid and tens of thousands of others have breathing, esp in the summertime.

I would have liked to have pointed out that distinction to the Corner, but it became clear to me at this would have been a useless gesture. Too bad.

[NinjaPlease]

Market Forces will cure this problem, right economists?

Government regulation is sure to foul things up and impede all indirect good deeds done by invisible hands.

Wake up...It's time to drink the cool aid.

[John Emerson]

The significance of pollution as a cause of various sorts of lung disease, and as something that exacerbates asthma, is cut and dried. Dreyer's child's asthma was just one example. But the others immediately zeroed in on asthma brcause the bigger question wouldn't work for them.

Norman Podhoretz is nothing more than a second-rank man of letters who's turned ideologue, but even he must be a bit ashamed of his son's performance.

[cb]

In texas the cement industry is a major contributor to the republican party, check out the Lattimore family. They are major donors to the republican party who also sits on the board of committes to adjudicate air quality issues and coincidentally own one of the largest cement and rock grinding operations in texas.
Much of the polution issues in this country has more to due with corruption in politics.

[Rob]

Keep in mind that RP has come out and said he doesn't believe in public education because it means that his children wouldn't have as big an advantage given his wealth as they would without public education. When that is the frame of mind you are dealing with trying to have a discussion on other people's welfare is a losing battle.

[WatchfulBabbler]

Both the DMN and "D" Magazine are relatively conservative outlets (or, more properly, staffed with relatively conservative editors), and both have discussed the ongoing problem of the cement plants south of the city. (D-Mag, in particular, has been scathing towards Barton and his fealty to TXI.)

The fact is that the three cement manufacturers have been politically protected by Joe Barton and the Ron Paul Republican subgroup, but that protection has already started to crack as mainstream Republican voters move south. "Cement kilns mean jobs" carries much less weight when you're a Dallasite lawyer wondering why your kid has leukemia. (Disclaimer: I live in the downtown area, and thus this issue has more than abstract resonance to me.)

Furthermore, Ellis County, protected by Barton, is seriously degrading the Dallas economy as well as its air quality -- the state just completed a study that effectively places the blame for Dallas' failure to meet air-quality guidelines on the cement kilns.

Dreher is completely correct: when pollution becomes an "at home" issue as it is in Dallas, the GOP will be forced to either deal with it honestly (as The Corner failed to do) or will lose ground to the Democrats.

So, Rod, we going to see some more reportage on this in the DMN?

[NinjaPlease]

Re: WatchfulBabbler

pay close attention to the "I can't compete with global markets if you put xxx regulation on my business."

For it is going to be the reason behind:

-wages dropping
-company sponsored health insurance disappearing
-union busting
-carte blanche dumping
-OSHA repealing
-Vast amounts Retirement funds going underfunded

The changes will be permanent. Permanent as long as we meaning employers and employees must compete against other nations who don't have the same set of labor laws and standard of living and pollution control laws as we do.

Free Trade is excellent among nations with wage / standard of living parity.

Free Trade should not be the means with which you "pull poor nations out of poverty," since it destroys jobs.

Free Trade should be used as an incentive to foreign governments to enact pollution control laws, minimum working standard laws, no child / slave labor allowed laws, etc. Instead THEY took something that could have been used to the benefit of all people on the planet, and twisted to destroy labor unions and greatly increase short term profits, even though in the long term, you're making your customers poorer, meaning they'll buy less of your cheaply made crap, meaning your long term profits will go down.

It must be a beautiful thing for the GOP, they have found a new way to become rich: Instead of making lots of money, drop the prices of all goods by creating value / price deflation due to foreign competition.

All of a sudden the $150,000 a year GOP supporter feels a hell of a lot richer even though he has not got a bigger cut of the pie.

[Brad DeLong]

re Rod Dreher's "Just for the record, I never claimed in my Corner postings that the air pollution in Dallas causes asthma."

Say not "causes" but "triggers attacks among the asthmatic." I know I'm infinitely happier, lungwise, here in unpolluted San Francisco than I was in polluted DC, even though the DC air in the 1990s was a lot less polluted than it was back in the 1970s when I was an asthmatic kid in high school.

[Howard]

on the "when you're a carpenter, all the world's problems look like nails" front, assuming that that was the real rod dreher who posted here, i've been saying for a while that the dems best bet in 2006 is to reach out to the honest conservatives in a coalition of truthfulness. put bush-ism and its fantasies behind us first, then we can return to arguing left and right....

[Emma Anne]

"Some Republicans just seem to be shitty people"

That is what struck me the most forcefully about the thread. It is possible to disagree about the effect of particulates or what levels of regulation are best. But it takes a special kind of asshole to make it so clear they really don't care if soccer playing children have to go use inhalers on the sidelines.

[Rod Dreher]

That was the real me who posted. I've got a book coming out next month called "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), which is about right-wing counterculturalists who dissent, broadly speaking, from the consumerist mindset dominating the American mainstream. They (we) tend to be fairly green, among other things. For example, I profile a couple of fundamentalist Christian livestock farmers who raise their meat organically and humanely, and who in some respects sound as disdainful and alienated from suburban Republicanism as any hippie. It's a big, diverse country, and I'm both bored and fed up with the narrow left-right orthodoxies that prevent people of good will on both sides of the divide from talking about and working together on issues of mutual concern. I'm all for robust debate, and don't much care for pretending that we agree when we really don't. But I've really just about had it with a politics of sneering self-righteousness, which is too common on both the left and the right today, and in which I regret to say I've engaged in the not too distant past.

[Howard]

Rod, admirable sentiments. i'll look forward to reading your book, which sounds quite interesting.

and i'll suggest, if you don't already read him, that you spend some time on the site of the cunning realist:

http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/

i'd also suggest that you reconsider some of the company you keep on the Corner, but we can't have everything!

[liberal]

I thought the connection between asthma and outdoor air pollution was unclear. Meaning, there's been a long-term secular decrease in outdoor pollution in the US, and (IIRC) asthma rates have been going up.

[WatchfulBabbler]

Rod -- those farmers wouldn't happen to be Rehoboth Ranch, would they?

[Gene O'Grady]

It's a little late to get into this one, but the thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned so far that most appals me (whose children and spouse have given me more than my fair share of knowledge of medical issues) is that assumption that Mr. Dreher (I don't read The Corner, but remember him as one of the two people on Amy Wellborn that I thought had some integrity however much I disagreed with much of what he wrote) is making some sort of claim to be heard based moral superiority derived from his family's suffering. It seemed obvious to me that he did what I would have done with an asthmatic child, which is to find as much information as I could, and, based on that research, was expressing an informed opinion.

[anne]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9F03E6DE153AF93AA25757C0A9659C8B63

April 19, 2003

Study Finds Asthma In 25% of Children In Central Harlem
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

A study has found that one of every four children in central Harlem has asthma, which is double the rate researchers expected to find and, experts say, is one of the highest rates ever documented for an American neighborhood.

Researchers say the figures, from an effort based at Harlem Hospital Center to test every child in a 24-block area, could indicate that the incidence of asthma is even higher in poor, urban areas than was previously believed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that about 6 percent of all Americans have asthma; the rate is believed to have doubled since 1980, but no one knows why. New York City is thought to have a higher rate than other major cities, but that, too, is something of a mystery. The disease kills 5,000 people nationally each year.

Previous studies have pointed to rates above 10 percent, and as high as the high teens, in the South Bronx, Harlem and a few other New York City neighborhoods where a long list of environmental factors put people at higher risk. Several asthma researchers say they know of no well-documented level above 20 percent in the United States.

Asthma is an inflammation and constriction of the airways that makes it difficult to breathe. Scientists believe that only someone with a genetic predisposition can become asthmatic, but environmental factors like pollen, dust, animal dander, air pollution and cold air also contribute to development of the disease and can lead to attacks.

Some of the worst triggers, studies have found, are most prevalent in poor communities, including the feces of cockroaches and dust mites, cigarette smoke and mold and mildew. Harlem, East Harlem and the South Bronx also have a heavy concentration of diesel bus and truck traffic, and the tiny particles in diesel exhaust are thought to be another serious asthma trigger.

Most previous attempts to measure asthma were based on asking people whether they had ever received a diagnosis of the disease, or suffered from obvious symptoms of it. But a program begun last year tried something far more ambitious: to conduct asthma tests on every child under 13 who lives or goes to school in a 24-square-block area of central Harlem, more than 2,000 of them....

[Rod Dreher]

Watchful: Yes, Rehoboth Ranch ... and Windy Farms, the chicken people who share the booth with them at the Dallas Farmer's Market.

[anne]

Rod Dreher

"I suspect if the Democrats cleaned up their own act it wouldn't take me much because of this to switch parties."

Please, there has been and is no comparison betwwen the parties. Where would a more significant environmentalist than Al Gore have been found?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/opinion/17tue3.html?ex=1295154000&en=4c421c1cbfaebc30&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

January 17, 2006

Ignoring Science on Clean Air

Every five years, the Clean Air Act requires the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to revise federal air quality standards for smog and soot. It is a stressful moment. When Carol Browner, President Bill Clinton's administrator, tightened standards in 1997, industry and its friends in Congress erupted in protest, and a federal appeals court said the rules were unconstitutional. The regulations did not actually take effect until Justice Antonin Scalia ruled in 2001 that Ms. Browner had the right to issue them and had done so properly.

Now it is the turn of Stephen Johnson at the E.P.A., only this time it is the scientists and environmentalists who are upset, and not without reason. Last month, Mr. Johnson proposed new rules governing fine particulate matter, known as soot. The most dangerous of these are microscopic specks that can cause significant inflammation and arterial damage in the bloodstream and the lungs.

At best, Mr. Johnson's proposed rules represent only a modest tightening of the Browner rules - despite considerable additional research over the last few years, some 2,000 studies altogether, expanding the list of adverse health effects associated with fine particles (especially among children) and, collectively, pointing to the need for stronger standards....

[Connie]

Really getting off track of the original post here, but Rod has hinted other times, in other places, that if it weren't for that darned pro-choice issue, he could vote for democrats.

[Arun Khanna]

U.S. cement industry could be outsourced to India. Even with transportation costs, we could probably get cheaper cement.

[NinjaPlease]

I hope that the "cheaper cement" doesnt get used in the bridges I cross and the buildings I enter.

Since the Bophal disaster, what measures has India taken to prevent companies from repeating it?

[Jerry]

I think there is little doubt that our worsening environment is related to the increasing rate of asthma. Sometimes it is hard to figure out if the air inside or outside is the worst. There is an online magazine out of Seattle called Grist that deals with many of these issues.

Just my thought -
Jerry http://www.findasthmatreatment.com/