Interesting note on how some truckers are starting to drive slower to save fuel costs:

Now that fuel for the first time has surpassed labor as the most significant cost for many trucking companies, it’s not surprising that they are taking steps to save. But here’s the tricky part. They want all of us to do the same.
The American Trucking Associations is calling for a nationwide 65-mph speed limit–not only to save fuel but as a matter of safety. “It would prevent a differential of speeds between trucks and cars, where you have cars weaving in and out to get by trucks,” says Clayton Boyce, spokesman for ATA. He says 77 percent of the ATA’s member companies have electronic speed limiters set at 68 mph–with many of them, like Con-Way, now opting for even lower speeds.

I don’t have a good sense as to how broad of a movement there is to slow down. Nor have I been doing enough highway driving to notice if truck (and other) drivers are indeed slowing down.
But if fuel prices continue to rise (as I believe they will), we’ll have more people calling for a reduction of highway speed limits. I don’t know that we’ll see a return to the national 55 m.p.h. standard, but a reduction to 65 m.p.h. along select (non-western) interstates is certainly conceivable.

Due to the failure of Michigan and Florida to come up with suitable “re-vote” plans, the debate over whether or not the two states should be represented at the Democratic convention is becoming a moot issue. But for several weeks the Clinton campaign tried to make the “disenfranchisement” of voters in these two states an issue.
I never bought the calls on the national party to do something for two reasons:
(1) The states were at fault because they rescheduled their primaries.
(2) Initially, the Clinton campaign agreed to bypass the elections in the two states. It was not until it became apparent that Clinton needed delegates from those states to win that she started complaining about unfairness.
But whatever merits Senator Clinton might have had in complaining about voters being heard have been complete discredited by her simultaneous argument that pledged delegates are not duty-bound to support the candidate that his or her voters chose.
What’s the point in holding elections if the delegates need not honor the results? Why bother voicing your choice if the ballots are ignored? We could save a lot of hassle and expense by forgoing the voting exercise and simply having the national party appoint selectors to pick the nominee.

Economists and others of that ilk frequently attempt to quantify human behavior into dollars and cents terms so that they can assess the costs and benefits of particular actions. To be sure, it’s an inexact science–some estimates aren’t easy to make.
But some efforts are better than others. William Shughart II, in an article entitled, “Daylight saving time costs nation $1.7 billion,” provides us with an example of the latter. Here he offers the rationale behind his $1.7 billion figure:

Although it is unclear what benefit Americans derive from adjusting their timepieces twice a year, the costs they bear are clear. As the Benjamin Franklin adage goes: Time is money, and time spent resetting clocks and watches is time that cannot be devoted to other, more valuable uses. Switching between daylight saving and standard time has what economists call an ”opportunity cost.”
Economists typically value the opportunity cost of a person’s time at his or her wage rate. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average American’s hourly wage was $17.57 in September 2007. Assuming that it takes everyone 10 minutes to move all of their clocks and watches forward or backward by an hour, the opportunity cost of doing so works out to $2.93 per person. Multiplying that number by the total U.S. population (excluding Arizona) yields a one-time opportunity cost for the nation of just under $860 million — or, to be more precise, $858,274,802. Since clocks must be changed twice every year, this back-of-the-envelope calculation must be doubled, to approximately $1.7 billion annually.

Shughart bases his estimate not on what people actually have to pay to change the time (an accounting cost), but rather on their supposed “opportunity cost” to do so.
According to Wikipedia, opportunity cost is “the cost incurred (sacrifice) by choosing one option over the next best alternative.”
For Mr. Shughart’s estimate to be accurate, every American needs to be faced with the choice of either (1) working an extra 10 minutes, or (2) setting his or her clocks.
The vast majority of Americans are NOT forgoing time they would otherwise be working when they set clocks on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Thus this calculation misses the mark.
UPDATE: A recent study on electricity usage in select Indiana counties suggests daylight savings time slightly increases energy consumption:

We found based on the natural experiment in Indiana that contrary to the conventional wisdom, daylight saving time … decreases consumption for artificial illumination but increases consumption for heating and cooling.
The magnitude of our estimate (for increased usage) ranged between 1% and 4%.

But the researchers acknowledge that the net energy consumption effect of the time change may be different in other parts of the United States.

It’s a good time to repost this.
Back before the 2000 election, when oil was around $33/barrel (inflation adjusted), candidate George W. Bush criticized the Clinton administration for the high price of gasoline. According to Bush, the solution to our energy woes was to import more oil.
For example, there was this:

Asked what he would do as president to address the price at the pump, Bush said he would confer with oil-producing allies and ask them to pump more crude. ‘I would use the capital my administration will earn with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, to convince them to open up the spigot,’ Bush said. ‘That’s where we will get immediate relief.’

and this:

In December 1999, in the first Republican primary debate, Mr. Bush said President Clinton “must jawbone OPEC members to lower prices.”

So, how well has Bush’s cunning plan worked out?

Oil prices reached a record close, surging above $104 after OPEC decided Wednesday to keep its production unchanged. The cartel ignored calls from President Bush to pump more oil into an ailing economy.
OPEC rebuffed its top consumer, arguing that the world was well supplied with oil and blaming financial speculators and mismanagement of the United States economy for the current high prices.

“Mismanagement of the United States economy.” Heh.
As a lame duck, President Bush may finally be starting to figure things out:

“America’s got to change its habits; we’ve got to get off oil,” President Bush said at a conference on renewable fuels. “Until we change our habits, there’s going to be more dependency on oil.”

Too bad this comes eight years too late.

I’ve seen a few reports of Democratic super-delegates switching sides–the most recent being of Rep. John Lewis. This strikes me as odd on two levels.
First, I’m not clear why all these people felt compelled to announce their allegiance in the first place. As super-delegates, their role is to settle a party nomination fight at the convention. In a sense they are referees charged with helping the party pick the “best” nominee. It seems to me they partially undermine their ability to objectively do this when they endorse a candidate early in the campaign.
But if you are going to side with a candidate–one with a viable shot to win the nomination–stick with that candidate. I’m scratching my head at these delegates currently switching from Clinton to Obama. What has fundamentally changed about either of these candidates since November? Nothing really, other than Obama becoming more popular.
Some people have rationalized such a switch on the grounds that the super-delegate should conform to the electoral wishes of his or her district. If that’s the case, then the super-delegate should have waited until after the local primary to announce his or her support.
When I see a public official who early on hopped aboard front-runner Clinton’s campaign, but is now switching to Obama, I can’t help but think we have a band wagon jumper in action.