LOS ANGELES, April 9 (UPI) — World oil prices were on the rise Wednesday as joyous Iraqis danced in celebration on the streets of Baghdad while oil traders looked ahead to a post-war tightening of world crude supplies.

May futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled 85 cents higher at $28.85 per barrel as OPEC appeared to be determined to cut its output in order to ease what it saw as a glut of oil on the world market.

At the same time, energy experts were telling a congressional committee that it would take several years for Iraq to become a major crude exporter and would probably never supplant Saudi Arabia as the primary player in the world oil market.

“Our estimate is that it would be 2-3 years and several billion dollars simply for Iraq to get back to where it was 1990, and perhaps $30 billion and 7-10 years to add another 2 1/2 million barrels a day,” Daniel Yergin, head of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Yergin said Saudi Arabia continued to be the world’s key producer both because of its huge reserves and its willingness to adjust production in order to maintain a stable price.

“We have right now in the world, whether we like it or not … only one strategic supplier that is willing and able to hold substantial amounts of idle capacity and is willing and able to swing its own production radically to meet market demands, and that is Saudi Arabia,” Yergin said. “Iraq one day, I think, can become a significant commercial supplier, along the lines of Russia and Norway.”

Iraq holds the world’s second-largest crude reserves behind Saudi Arabia and was pumping around 3.5 million barrels per day in 1990. After its ill-fated occupation of Kuwait, however, Iraqi production never topped 2.7 million barrels and its oil infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and its limited exports were eventually shut off by the current war.

Estimates are that crude will not be flowing from the southern oil fields until this summer, and the northern oil fields around Kirkuk remained in Iraqi hands Wednesday.

“The success of the war will soon lead to a slow increase in Iraqi production,” Martha Brill Olcott, senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Senate committee. “I think it would be a mistake to prematurely conclude that the war in Iraq has substantially changed calculations of U.S. energy security. The United States still uses more (oil) than we produce … so this challenge is going to stay before us.”

Oil markets weren’t thinking in terms of years on Wednesday but rather looked ahead to summer and the impact that OPEC’s expected production cuts will have on the U.S. gasoline supply.

Closely watched weekly inventory reports issued by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and American Petroleum Institute showed a 2.5 million to 3.5 million barrel drop in crude supplies along with an increase in gasoline supplies.

“This was the first (crude) decline after three consecutive weeks of inventory increases,” the EIA said. “Gasoline inventories rose by 1.5 million barrels last week but are at the low end of the normal range.”

U.S. refiners increased gasoline output during the past week in anticipation of the summer driving season, which should help keep pump prices lower. At the same time, however, OPEC was sending strong signals that the production increases ordered before the Iraq war were about to end.

OPEC has scheduled a meeting in Vienna on April 24, when it’s expected to lower export quotas. The EIA has estimated the cuts will keep crude prices around the $28 per barrel level on NYMEX.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear how OPEC will handle the pending return to full crude production by Iraq, a member nation that for the past 10 years has had its crude exports strictly limited under the U.N. oil-for-food program.

British officials said earlier in the month that it would likely take until June for the oilfields in the south of Iraq to be repaired and readied for production. At the same time, more than 8 million barrels of northern Iraqi crude valued at more than $200 million are being stored in Ceyhan, Turkey, where they could conceivably be loaded aboard tankers as soon as the United Nations gives the word.

Although Baghdad was largely under U.S. control on Wednesday, Saddam Hussein loyalists still held the northern oil fields around Kirkuk, which prompted a warning from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the wells could possibly be wired for demolition.

American paratroopers in the north have been reinforced by newly arrived armor from the 1st Infantry Division and were getting into position to hit the Iraqis and possibly move on the oilfields around Kirkuk, it was reported Wednesday. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that military officials hoped to seize the northern wells before they fell to Kurdish irregulars.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

“Dick Rowland Image”

”Shoots (News, Views and Quotes)”

– It’s a McMiracle

McDonald’s is experimenting with all-white-meat McNuggets. No more
McGristle and grayish McMystery-meat. Also on tap: new, bigger salads,
with dressings from none other than Paul Newman.

It is all part of the chain’s push to revamp its menu into something
folks actually want to eat, and thus get back in the black. Contrary to
food-police assertions that McDonald’s can just market itself to
profitability, the chain has to respond to a national palate that might
want something other than burgers and fries.

At the same time, burgers and fries are its bread and butter. The
restaurant can’t risk alienating its core customers who like their
reliable old McDonald’s. A nod in that direction can be seen in the
announcement that a move to lower-fat cooking oil for fries has been
delayed. That sounds like code for, “Our taste testers didn’t like it.”
(Maybe McDonald’s should jump on the “freedom fries” bandwagon.)

There are also big hurdles to trying to mix in more fresh fare at your
average burger palace. Fresh ingredients are more costly to handle and
to move than frozen and canned stuff. McDonald’s can’t make more by
losing money on its new menu items.

But hey — an edible McNugget has to be a winner.

https://abcnews.go.com/wire/SciTech/reuters20030307_669.html

– Begun These Linux Wars Have

You’ve got to hand it to SCO Group: The software company managed to find
some deep pockets amid the Linux open-source movement. SCO has sued IBM,
charging that IBM took some of SCO’s proprietary Unix code and grafted
it onto Linux. SCO wants a cool $1 billion.

This matter involves very esoteric computer stuff and is bound to get
only more abstruse, but the core lesson is that open-source software
cannot escape bad law. The SCO case may go nowhere, but its mere
existence shows that all the cooperative, open development in the world
cannot outrun lawyers.

If SCO succeeds in shaking some cash from Big Blue, it could unleash a
flood of such licensing suits over supposed intellectual property
usurpations. There have already been a few on the hardware side of
things, but with the economy dead in the water and corporate spending on
IT products still flat, suing a rival — or even a former partner —
might be one of the few growth opportunities for software companies.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24033-2003Mar1?language=printer

https://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/29632.html

Above articles are quoted from Reason Express March 11, 2003,
https://www.reason.com

– Consensus Group Participants Respond To President Bush’s Medicare
Proposal

Many organizations weighed in this week with their thoughts on the Bush
Administration’s framework for Medicare modernization. Here’s what some
Consensus Group participants are saying:

Grace-Marie Turner, Galen Institute Press Release — “What is needed is a
fresh breath of competition and consumer-choice to allow seniors to
decide for themselves what health plan they want, plans that will
include prescription drug coverage. It’s clear that President Bush wants
to bring Medicare into the modern age to give seniors more choices.”

Tom Miller, Cato Institute Press Release — “Medicare payments on both
sides of the spending equation (those going to beneficiaries as well as
those going to health care providers) need to be linked more closely and
comprehensively both to market prices and taxpayers’ willingness to pay,
rather than to hollow political promises and the administered price
controls that follow them.”

Bob Moffit, The Washington Times — Opponents are trying to confuse the
public with “a nightmare vision of seniors being barred from seeing
doctors they trust, thrown instead to the ravenous HMO wolves prowling
the cold, dark forest of corporate health care.To get a clearer picture
of the president’s model for Medicare reform and whether it’s something
seniors should fear, ask yourself: Have members of Congress and federal
officials designed and, for four decades, maintained an inferior
health-care program for themselves and their families?”

Robert Goldberg, The Washington Times — President Bush “articulated a
very specific plan, one that clearly moves Medicare — including drug
coverage – into the marketplace. At the very least, it is clear that the
president sees the growth of entitlements as a challenge that he must
and will deal with. But, in this regard, it appears that he stands
alone, even in his own party. Republicans have failed to think through
any portion of the president’s plan, from the issue of access to new
medicines to the growing problem of rampant entitlements. The sellout of
the president has been so rapid and so complete it is breathtaking.”

White House fact sheet on President Bush’s plan:
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030304-1.html

Above article is quoted from Galen Institute Health Policy Matters March
7, 2003, www.galen.org

”Roots (Food for Thought)”

– It’s Time To Resanctify Colorblindness as Ideal

By Mitchell B. Pearlstein

Affirmative action in higher education admissions started picking up
steam immediately after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in
1968. I would like to think it’s self-evident that whatever one thought
of race-based preferences at their start, or whatever one thinks about
them now, something cried out to be done to increase minority
enrollments at selective institutions back then, including the State
University of New York at Binghamton, where I was an undergraduate.

If I recall correctly, my alma mater enrolled a little under 3,000
students in the mid-1960s. Of that number, I don’t think more than a
dozen were black — and at least one of them was a remarkable fellow
from Zimbabwe, then known as Southern Rhodesia. So maybe there were a
grand total of 10 or 11 African-American students on a major public
campus in a very large state. This was neither good nor seemly, by any
measure.

One of the lines of defense used by affirmative action advocates in
those early days went like this: Taking race into account in admissions
was admittedly unattractive, but given our country’s past and continuing
record of racism, we had no other choice. Simple fairness, went the
argument, demanded preferences — at least for a while.

How long would that “while” last? In the vicinity of 30 to 35 years,
seemed the answer mentioned most often.

By the mid-1970s, I had grown so fascinated by the passions and
paradoxes of affirmative action in higher education that I picked it as
my dissertation topic at the University of Minnesota. What do I mean by
passions and paradoxes? Conundrums like the following, as captured in a
1977 report:

“Pursuing preferential admission policies would seem to be inconsistent
with our deeply held convictions regarding individuality, merit, and
personal responsibility. Failing to pursue such policies seems to reveal
moral and ethnic blindness on the part of the majority to the historic
and contemporary condition of racial minorities in American society, and
is therefore perceived to be contrary to humanitarian and egalitarian
themes within our national experience.”

Inspired by such on-the-one-hand but on-the-other-hand analyses, it
became increasingly difficult for me to write anything about affirmative
action that didn’t send readers on pretzeled excursions. I might be a
reasonably ideological fellow, but on this issue, my favorite color
shaded toward plaid.

Well, don’t look now, but it’s 2003, or a full 35 years since pronounced
racial considerations and preferences in almost all aspects of American
higher education began to take serious hold. We’re also within weeks of
the U.S. Supreme Court hearing a case involving the University of
Michigan that may clarify what is, and what is not, permissible under
the hydra headings of affirmative action.

Which is to conclude: The time has arrived to firmly retrieve the
fundamentally liberal idea that, when it comes to allocating benefits
and burdens, a public institution should hardly ever take account of a
citizen’s complexion. It’s time to resanctify colorblindness as an ideal
— though not just because a chunk of a century has passed.

What other, noncalendar reasons might there be to challenge racial
preferences? Just about every constitutional argument elucidated in all
the friend-of-the court briefs filed by opponents in the Michigan case
would apply. But, I hasten to add, I’m ultimately compelled less by
legal contentions and more by how affirmative action often stalls the
very people it intends to help fly.

John McWhorter is a brilliant and brave linguist at the University of
California, Berkeley. He’s also black and has written about how we must
eliminate race-based affirmative action not for “abstruse philosophical
reasons” or because it can be “laboriously interpreted as
discrimination” — but because it obstructs African-Americans “from
showing us that they are as capable as all other people.”

By requiring less of blacks, he continues, affirmative action cheats
them of “the unalloyed sense of personal, individual responsibility for
their accomplishments that other students so often can have.” More to
the practical point, McWhorter claims that as long as African-Americans
are held to abridged standards, their academic performance will be
abridged, too, as expectations exert an almost magnetic pull on results.

The question raised by this malign dynamic is politically tough but
straightforward: If race-based affirmative action is a sizable reason
itself why so many black students continue to do poorly in school, is it
realistic to imagine a time — no matter how distant in the future —
when it somehow morphs into a spur, rather than a brake, on more
substantial learning and progress?

Mitchell B. Pearlstein is President of Center of the American
Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis.

This commentary originally appeared Feb. 10, 2003 in the Star Tribune.

”Evergreen (Today’s Quote)”

“In this land where one’s religious affiliation is a matter of
less-than-lethal intensity, it’s hard to realize that it’s a matter of
life and very often death to multimillions in India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, as well as being basic in Israeli-Arab warring. And for more
decades than London politicos like to remember,Ireland’s religious
strife has been making and unmaking British parliaments and prime
ministers. Maybe it’s not all bad that lots of us don’t feel so
dedicated to our respective faiths that we’re willing to persecute those
not sharing our brand of Enlightenment.” — Malcolm s. Forbes (1972)

”’Edited by Richard O. Rowland, president of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. He can be reached at (808) 487-4959 or by email at:”’ mailto:grassroot@hawaii.rr.com ”’For more information, see its Web site at:”’ https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/

“Suzanne Gelb Image”

”Motivation – Why Does it Fade?”

Dear Dr. Gelb:

A few weeks ago, Hawaii Reporter printed a speech that President Bush made to the military in Florida. The speech was inspiring. Here’s the part that was relevant to the battles I am dealing with:

“The path we are taking is not easy, and it may be long. Yet we know our destination. We will stay on the path — mile by mile — all the way to Baghdad, and all the way to victory.”

My question is — now that some time has passed since I read that speech, the words are not as motivating and I could sure use the motivation. Why does motivation dwindle?

Motivated

Dear Motivated:

I can only share my thoughts with you. I believe that the President and his advisors are doing a good job. We are the most powerful country and we have sophisticated combatant tools. Our soldiers are motivated by love and discipline, not hate. I do believe that there were misconceptions about the determination of the Iraqis, and that many have obviously been threatened, as determined from our intelligence, to fight or die. It appears that they are promised a good place in heaven even to the point of committing suicide.

I have no criticism of our leadership and its ability to prevail with the mission that our troops have been sent to accomplish. There is no way in my opinion, that that country can stand up to the punishment they are receiving. Even if many of the civilians turn terrorist and sacrifice their lives, it does not appear that they can win. I believe the President when he says that this fight is to free those deprived people over there from this dictator who values no life whatsoever.

”Naivet

“Malia Lt Blue top Image”

Opening day of the 2003 Hawaii Legislative session, Democrat leaders in the House and Senate, taking a page from Republican Gov. Linda Lingle’s 2002 campaign for governor, called for “change” and “a new beginning.”

House Majority Leader Scott Saiki in his speech claimed Democrats running for office in 2002 had walked hundreds of miles and talked to thousands of constituents who said they wanted “change.”

“We get it,” Saiki adamantly repeated as he called for reform in campaign spending laws, a more honest government and a stronger public school system.

House Speaker Calvin Say also called for “change,” and said the days of asking “what’s in it for me” are over. He presented the House’s 15 Republican and 36 Democrat members with a gift — a bamboo shoot — symbolizing “what they could accomplish together.”

“The bamboo plant is an ancient Chinese symbol of strength and good fortune. The empty center of the stem represents a virtuous person with an open mind. The bamboo thrives because it is flexible. I hope we can be like this too — flexible, but strong,” Say said. Flexible, strong, open-minded, he said.

Across the Capitol in the Senate, Democrat Senate Pres. Robert Bunda talked of building a “stronger, more prosperous community.”

“We must be bold, we shouldn’t be afraid to offer proposals that may seem too daring or far-reaching. We mustn’t hesitate to share ideas, to suggest the seemingly impossible, to resurrect discarded notions, or to seek new ways of doing what we’ve always done. I would argue that it’s our obligation as legislators to do so, and I know the Senate, with the decisive leadership of our committee chairs, will be at the forefront of these efforts,” Bunda said. He stunned his audience and fellow Democrats when he proposed resurrecting the dead and discredited fixed rail transit proposal.

They each pledged to find a way to work together with Lingle, the first Republican governor in 40 years and the first-ever woman in that office.

So far this session, these words from the state’s Democrat lawmakers have echoed hollowly throughout the state Capitol.

Yesterday, during the second crossover or exchange of bills from one House to the other, they proved they did not mean a word they said Jan. 15, 2003, opening day of the session, possibly with the exception of the hostile anti-Bush, anti-Republican remarks Say made near the end of his speech, when he used the same old tired argument, pointing to the Republicans as only helping the “very rich.” This followed Say’s statement that he was not concerned Lingle was a Republican.

In fact, the majority of Democrats through their votes, floor speeches and endorsement of bills, proved once again they have no new ideas or lack the courage to act on them, and that they do not truly want to help the economy or the business community, reform education or close campaign finance legal loopholes that allow rampant and wide-spread abuse by politicians wanting contributions and businesses seeking government permits and contracts.

They proved they have no understanding of the free-market, how business works, how prosperity is created, how people are raised out of poverty instead of becoming more reliant on government subsidies, and how to fix the economy they say they so desperately want to improve.

Bunda so much as admitted this when almost bewildered he said in his speech that “we are facing the same fiscal realities that have dogged us for so long.”

”Improving The Economy”

Rather than helping to free business people, the creators of wealth, of burdensome regulations, taxes and mandates — the triangle that strangles business and gives Hawaii the worst-in-the-nation business climate ratings — Democrat legislators predictably are making the situation much, much worse by proposing to substantially raise taxes and attempting to add mandates and regulations.

In the Senate, Democrats, with a few exceptions, voted to raise Hawaii’s taxes by $430 million through three proposals, including a 12.5 percent increase in the general excise tax ($180 million); a 7-year plan that imposes a monthly tax on anyone with business interests, land ownership or residency in Hawaii to fund a socialist long-term care government fund ($100 million +); and to give the Honolulu City & County the right to tax anyone purchasing goods on Oahu an additional 1 percent sales tax in addition to the 4.5 percent general excise tax they increased ($120 million).

Sen. Gary Hooser, D-Kauai, who touts the fact that he is a small business owner with 14 employees, praised the general excise tax increase, which will result in $180 million more in tax revenues, $120 million Democrat senators promise will be used to fund the education system. Hooser said the money is needed to fund the education system and anyone not supporting the increase is turning their back on the children of Hawaii.

“Some of us are saying education is not a priority,” he said while glaring at the Republican minority next to him who voted against the general excise tax increase. “Yes it will raise the cost of living, but businesses will not flee our shores and the economy will improve just like it always does. I wish we were not raising taxes, but the alternatives are worse.”

Sen. Sam Slom, a Republican representing the East Oahu district, who also is president of the small business advocacy organization, Small Business Hawaii, says Hooser is dead wrong. Businesses have fled the shores and the economy has not improved for more than a decade, Slom says.

“For three straight years we led the nation in bankruptcies, and not a day goes by that we don’t read or hear about a benchmark family business being forced to shut down because of the high cost of taxes, mandates, regulations or a combination of all three,” Slom says.

And not only have the businesses fled, other business owners and investors considering starting a business in Hawaii won’t come to the state because the business climate is so bad and the education system is so poorly managed, something Slom says will not be fixed with more money, rather decentralization, more power to parents and teachers and better management.

“The very people that will be hurt by this tax increase will be the children, something Sen. Hooser certainly does not understand,” Slom says.

Hooser claimed ignorantly on the Senate floor that the general excise tax increase will add just 2 cents to every plate lunch and arrogantly claimed the increase will have little impact on the people of Hawaii, except the rich people who he says are buying Lexus cars and who are complaining most about the $250 he estimates will be attached to the purchase of such a luxury automobile.

Lowell Kalapa, president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, also says Hooser is dead wrong in his assessment of the impact of the tax increase. The poor and the economy will be hurt by this general excise tax increase, and the impact of the tax will be much higher than just 2 cents on a plate lunch, Kalapa says.

Kalapa says Hooser is taking a micro rather than macro view of the economy — seeing just the money the government will get, rather than the $180 million that will be sucked out of the economy.

He says the tax will hurt the poor the most. “Any transaction tax is a regressive tax and hurts the poor the most because they spend almost 100 percent of their budget on food and rent, while for the