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So, apparently Ohio Senator Rob Portman may actually be a leading candidate in the “Veepstakes” after all.

When I first saw a Plain Dealer column to this effect, a couple of weeks ago, I thought “yeah, you bet, just like at least one prospect in every state in the union (with the exception of maybe, say, Vermont), in all of which there’s going to be some Yepsen-style self-appointed political pundit capable of convincing him or herself that a local politician stands to become a national mover-and-shaker.”

And yet, I’ve seen this a few times since, and now even The Economist‘s Lexington columnist has anointed Portman as his(?) favored Romney running mate.

I still don’t believe it, mind. After all, who was predicting Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate four years ago? All of the smart money was on Bill Richardson, or Hillary, with maybe a few other minor possibilities. None of whom were Biden; everyone knew he was way too gaffe-prone after all.

Still, that aside, I suppose it could be. After all, Biden (and, before that, Cheney) suggests that the eventual pick will be exactly the kind of person no one has heard of whom Portman epitomizes, aside from a few speculative online articles. I mean, I LIVE HERE IN OHIO and I can’t fathom what on Earth would make Portman seem like an appealing candidate, even if I pretend that I’m Mitt Romney. Apparently Romney likes Portman, and vice versa, and I guess I can see that. But otherwise?

I don’t think Portman can realistically provide any help for the Romney ticket in Ohio; he hardly qualifies as a “favorite son.” He hasn’t been around long enough to become any kind of institution, or rack up goodwill from groups through the role of Senate “fixer.” Portman has basically no record, whatsoever, that I can think of. Which I suppose is a kind of plus, in that a gray-haired cypher is unlikely to sink the ticket, and given the fate of the previous GOP presidential campaign it isn’t hard to imagine a strong “first, do no harm” mentality dominating thoughts on a Veep selection. I still can’t imagine this makes Portman all that unique or irreplaceable.

That said, though, if Romney wants to nominate Rob Portman, I say go right ahead. Dream scenario, Portman resigns his Senate seat and we get a free do-over on electing an actually useful junior Senator from Ohio, and Romney & Rob then go on to lose the race for the White House too. Otherwise, if Romney wins I don’t see his administration being made any worse by Portman than it would be anyway, and we still get the free shot; if Romney loses and Portman just goes back to being another brick in the GOP Senate wall, here again we’re not really worse off than before.

So, go right ahead, Mitt. Take Rob Portman—please.

I want to make note of a post by Matthew Yglesias from this past week, which I felt really hit the nail on the head. “Slouching Toward Utopia” doesn’t really break a whole lot of new ground, but I think Yglesias really distills a lot of issues down into a simple but very potent summary. The entire last paragraph is really worth quoting:

One problem in the emerging rentier economy is that employing human beings will still serve a kind of status role, especially as it becomes less and less strictly necessary to do so. Horses are no longer production inputs, but they’re still status symbols. At the same time, material plenty means that people who aren’t lucky enough to be enjoying rents will be less and less likely to work. We should expect increasing levels of Murray-style moral panic about working class “idleness” along with an increasing Ryan-style insistence that we “can’t afford” a welfare state despite having become a more prosperous society. As specific segments of the protected workforce are successfully appropriated, the stock of rentless workers will grow even as the well-being of the previously rentless workers rises due to further falls in the objective cost of living. The ideal outcome is that (perhaps after a social crisis à la the Bell Riots) everyone gets expropriated and we abolish private property in ideas and natural resources. Then by taxing pollution, land, congestion, and other externalities, we have adequate revenue to provide a decent social minimum for all, at which point people do what they like. Some people’s hobbies will align reasonably well with some kind of labor-market opportunity whereas others won’t, but society won’t be organized around a “work hard or else you’ll starve and be homeless” model because there will not objectively be a shortfall of food and houses or much of anything else.

There’s still a lot going on in here. I think the early bit comparing the prospects for employment of increasingly unnecessary human labor with horses in an automobile age could be explored a lot further, as it seems painfully relevant to a great deal of what “work” has become in this day and age, arguably along much of the income scale in fact. Even up in highly-paid middle and upper management, I think you could well make that point that much of the real “function” of people who spend their days exchanging e-mails, attending meetings and planning Powerpoint presentations is little more than flattering the ego of those they serve.

And of course down toward the other end, the “service economy” seems largely based on a situation in which hyper-efficient technology has made large numbers of people surplus to production requirements, but the ownership stake in that production is concentrated among a relatively small portion of society who don’t really need most of the remaining population in any meaningful sense but (as long as all of those plebians are around and desperate for some sort of income) will usually be able to come up with some sort of tasks for them which, even if they provide little more than mild amusement, are probably worth the tiny expenditure necessary. This is basically the economic role which Ayn Rand openly and explicitly assigned to non-elites in Atlas Shrugged. The web site fiverr.com offers an appalling preview of what this sort of economy has in store for most people.

But I think the real lightning bolt in Yglesias’ post was his nine-word summation, toward the end, of the alternative to a utopian abundancy economy: “work hard or else you’ll starve and be homeless.”

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I got an e-mail from this Environment Ohio group; they are trying to gather signatures for a petition supporting the new EPA rules which will basically be the end of new coal power stations. As this is a national issue I think anyone can send a message of support to the EPA; I encourage you to go do so.

If you need further motivation beyond the general, obvious situation of the many dangers of fossil fuel dependency, I offer this quote from coal company Peabody Energy’s press release protesting the new policy:

…the rule puts the backbone of America’s electricity base at risk, by failing to recognize the outstanding positive externalities that coal-fueled electricity provides, leading to significant benefits for health…

Yes, that’s right, coal-fueled electricity generates positive externalities, in multiple areas including your health! Huh, not exactly what I had heard. Honestly, this press release is an absolute astonishing mess of one nonsensical line of gibberish after another. The above excerpt is probably the biggest howler, but there are a lot of contenders. The other best bit, I would say, is the fact that in the same press release they moan about overly harsh anti-pollution measures and how “carbon capture and storage technologies are promising but not yet commercially available,” while also referring to the threat of “greenhouse gas emissions” as a reason why natural gas should not be considered safe, and then closing out with the boilerplate line that they are “a global leader in clean coal solutions.” Oh, and let’s not forget coal’s “environmental improvement” which is unmatched by any other fuel. Gollllllllll-ee!

Holy fuck, I mean honestly Meg Gallagher, you really feel comfortable putting your name on this drivel? Environment Ohio makes a very valid point that the coal industry, like big oil, is going to throw every resource they have at killing even minor, toothless little feints toward an energy policy which is not of, by and for fossil fuel companies. I’m on my way to the Y in a few minutes, and if I don’t see at least one ad of the “vote4energy” astroturf campaign type, I will be pretty surprised. (And I don’t work out that long, either.) And I have to worry that we’re just going to lose this fight because they have a lot, lot, lot more money. If the Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, NRDC, etc., could blanket the airwaves with their messages, I’m pretty sure they would; as it is their combined budgets are probably little more than pocket change relative to just Exxon-Mobil.

Still, despite Peabody’s dire warning about “the American consumer [coming] under the same price pressure at the plug that they now have at the pump” I don’t think the coal industry has anything like the super-sensitive pressure point which the oil industry does. The electricity industry just doesn’t work the same way. And so it does at least seem possible that America is on its way, slowly and awfully late, to a post-coal economy, at least if we imagine that this EPA policy amounts to even a fraction of the symbolic significance which the coal industry seems to believe that it does, and if Obama wins a second term.

Because, I gotta say, no matter how much money they have or how freely they spend it, if they can’t do any better than quantum gobbledygook which would shame Mitt Romney and which even a child could see through… I feel just slightly optimistic that their money isn’t going to buy much public outrage on their behalf.