Back in the 90s, author Clark Taylor rewrote a nursery rhyme to tell the story of the illegal drug industry. One of those books with the dreaded tagline "valuable resource," The House That Crack Built is a fascinating artifact of the 1990s drug war.

Recent children's books about drugs are, well, somewhat less daring in their treatment of the issue.

The House That Crack Built is, of course, an artifact of a different period of time. But given that crack is still building many mansions all over the world, it's well worth a read for context.

—Daniel Luzer

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Elections, the consultants tell us, are about the future, not the past. And all politics is not only local but aspiration-driven. It's about not only what's gone wrong or what people fear but what voters want and, yes, hope, for. And Barack Obama is quite good at speaking about aspirations, whether at home or abroad.

From his much-anticipated speech in Berlin on Thursday:

People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time. I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived – at great cost and great sacrifice – to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on the world.

The speech was predictably grand; the photo op, superb, with Obama bathed in golden light. There's not much policy in these eloquent words--though elsewhere in the speech he did speak about the pressing need to globally confront climate change, poverty, and AIDS. But in politics--and in government--inspiration does matter. And being a great communicator of lofty ideals is not a bad credential for a candidate--or a president.

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From the Wall Street Journal, here's the Kyoto Treaty's latest carbon offset scandal:

Rhodia SA manufactures hundreds of tons a day of adipic acid, an ingredient in nylon, at its factory [in Korea]. But the real money is in what it doesn't make. The payday, which could amount to more than $1 billion over seven years, comes from destroying nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, an unwanted byproduct and potent greenhouse gas. It's Rhodia's single most profitable business world-wide. Last year, destroying nitrous oxide here and at a similar plant in Brazil generated €189 million ($300.5 million) in sales of pollution "credits." . . .The [French-owned] Rhodia factory is slated to bring in more money, under the U.N.-administered program, than all the clean-air projects currently registered on the continent of Africa.

This story should lay to rest any doubts that carbon offsets must be treated with the utmost skepticism by lawmakers. It reprises a similar debacle I reported here, involving refrigerant manufactures who were "paid" under Kyoto to create more greenhouse gases so that they could destroy them and call it a carbon offset. The Rhodia case is all the more troubling because the culprit is a French company that should be running green anyway and because Kyoto's regulators were supposed to have learned how to prevent this by now. In short, buyer beware as the United States shops for its own legislative solution to climate change.
So why are these glaring cases of profiteering being glossed over in Washington? As I note in our July/August issue, the biggest carbon offset companies have partnered with some of the world's biggest polluters in an attempt to sculpt the details of a U.S. climate bill. (Lieberman-Warner would have allowed companies to meet up to 30 percent of their emission reductions with offsets). Hardly anybody is talking about this. The offset lobby still enjoys the kind of positive PR that its industrial partners can only dream of. It's a joke, but they're the ones who'll laugh to the bank.
 

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Corporate America and its wealthy executive class has had it good under the Bush administration. Not only has it benefited from massive tax cuts, but the Bush administration has stood idle as huge numbers of American companies have set up phony headquarters in the Cayman Islands so better to avoid what little taxes they might have to pay in the U.S. According to a GAO report scheduled for release today, since 2002, the number of American entities reporting a Cayman Island bank account has jumped from 2,677 to nearly 8,000. Suspiciously, investigators traced more than 9,000 American entities that had registered in the Caymans to a single office building.

Past estimates have put the loss of revenue from such schemes at $100 billion. The move to off-shore accounts hasn't exactly been a secret. But the administration has simply turned a blind eye to it as the IRS has struggled to enforce the law with limited resources. That may change, however. The Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing on the issue today to consider whether the IRS ought to get some more money and power to make sure that every U.S. corporation pays its fair share. That should come as welcome news to cash-strapped states, which are now facing a whopping $40 billion collective budget deficit, according to the National Conference of State Legislators, leading to widespread cuts in everything from health care services to Maine's popular fish hatchery program.

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