April 26, 2006 12:11 PM

Editorial page editor Vincent Carroll

Welcome to editorial page editor Vincent Carroll, who also writes the On Point column. Please post your questions now.

Mark(Q) In your On Point column this morning you chided politicians who are rushing to clamp an "excess profits" tax on oil companies and launching investigations into price fixing. What would you have the Congress or administration do, if anything, in the face of rising gas prices?
Vincent_Carroll(A) I support some of the things President Bush suggested yesterday, such as tapping the petroleum reserve and waiving certain regulations, but these will have at most modest effect in the short term and of course no effect on supplies in the long term. I've long favored more production on the North Slope of Alaska -which, as Bush mentioned, would be contributing a lot to our domestic supplies if exploration had been approved a decade ago. Same thing is true for offshore drilling on vast swaths of the continental shelf that are inexplicably now off limits. But in the long run, you've got to trust the ability of consumers, corporations and the economy as a whole to adjust to high prices the way they have always done: by moving to alternatives, curtailing use and adding to the supplies. There's no magic bullet.

Mark(Q) You point out the irony of politicians who railed about the need for alternative energy/conservation who are now upset about the biggst spur to their adoption: higher gas prices. Do you think high gas prices are actually good for America in the long run?
Vincent_Carroll(A) No, I don't think higher prices are good for America in the long run because they do suppress, if only at the margin, economic growth and the wealth it generates for all of us. But I'm just saying that higher prices undoubtedly do have side effects that we can all applaud, and among them is the more rapid exploitation of alternative energy sources. Many environmentalists, commentators and policy wonks have for years argued in favor of a carbon tax, for example, in order to push consumers into buying smaller cars etc. And many have praised European countries for their high energy taxes would curtail consumptioin. Well, now we have the equivalent of a megacarbon tax in place and yet the very same people are whining.

Mark(Q) The fight over illegal immigration keeps getting uglier. Do you have any sense that Congress will take any action this year? What would you urge them to do?
Vincent_Carroll(A) Our editorial position is pretty clear: We're for some version of legislation similar to what the Senate has been considering - in other words, one that attempts to close the border but that also includes a lengthy pathway to citizenship for many of those here illegally as well as a guest worker program. It's simply not credible, let alone humane, to talk about deporting 12 to 15 million people. It would create chaos, both in a human and economic sense. I do understand the skepticism of those who don't trust the federal government to take meaningful control of the southern border. They're saying, You fooled us once (in 1986 when the last big immigration reform passed) when you didn't close the border, and you're not going to fool us again. Maybe the solution is to have a bill that phases in the various elements. In other words, no one here illegally ould begin to access the path to citizenship until, say, five years out when the government had demonstrated that it could seriously curtail the influx of illegal immigration. If that doesn't taken place, if the government fails to make real progress on the border, then legalization would never occur. I'd like to believe Congress can still find the will to act this year, but I'm doubtful.

Mark(Q) via-email: Have you written an editorial about the courage it takes to leave home, to cross into the U.S., to find a job, to send most of your earnings to those you left behind and may never see again? Have you considered that those who come here are among the BEST becasue they have courage and imagination and perseverance? Are you actually giving this issue your attention or avoiding it because your readership and advertisers are befuddled and don't want to grapple with it?
Vincent_Carroll(A) We've written many times about the contributions that immigrants make to this economy and this society - and that includes many of those who come illegally. It is undoubtedly true - or at least many of us operate under the assumption - that those who come tend to include people with greater than average self-initiative and willingness to take risks. That's been true since the founding of this country. The flip side these days, however, is just the sheer numbers of illegals. Many Americans think we've reached the tipping point where something must be done or our society's ability to assimilate the current batch of immigrants, as previous groups have been assimilated, will be in jeopardy. And I'm sympathetic to some of those arguments, too.

Mark(Q) Can the U.S. get a handle on illegal immigration without building a fence along several hundred miles of the Mexican border?
Vincent_Carroll(A) I don't know. But it seems to me that in this era of sophisticated electronic equipment that it shouldn't be necessary to build a fence or wall across the entire U.S.-Mexican border to do the job. The image of such wall isn't appealing to me, although I know it doesn't bother many proponents of closing the border. Even Tom Tancredo has argued in my presence that electronic means of border surveillance could do a much more effective job than what is being done now.

Mark(Q) via e-mail: Did you support Bill Owens' veto of the "morning after" emergency contraception bill?
Vincent_Carroll(A) No, our editorial page didn't support him. We supported the veto last year because in our view that earlier bill threatened to force religious-owned hospitals to violate their own deeply held ethics. That wasn't true of this year's bill and so we endorsed it.

Mark(Q) via e-mail: Why shouldn't CU sign on to the agreement that forces more humane working conditions in the overseas factories that manufacture all their hats and sweatshirts?
Vincent_Carroll(A) Because it isn't clear that the proposal would have any effect on those working conditions at all. And because CU itself would be giving up all control over where its apparel is made and giving the authority to a union-backed organization that could, if it chose, refuse to approve any factory outside of, say, a single Central American country - or even, believe it or not, outside the United States. I have no idea to what extent workers making CU apparel are being exploited in Third World factories, and neither do the critics. That's why CU should be open to reasonable reform. But it shouldn't buy the idea implicit in some of the criticism that factory work in developing countries is intrinsically exploitative and a human rights catastrophe. We of course would find the work in many Third World factories intolerable. But the key question is what is the alternative. I've seen with my own eyes in China the transformation that manufacturing can make in a society, lifting literally 300 million or more people out of the most squalid poverty you can imagine.

Mark(Q) What don't you like about the Boulder schools' plan to limit open enrollment at several schools to stop "white flight" away from neighborhood schools that have become predonimantly Hispanic?
Vincent_Carroll(A) I believe in the maximum freedom of choice possible for parents in educating their kids. In Colorado, thank heaven, we have a law allowing a student to enroll in any school, in or outside his or her district, so long as space is available. Many, many parents have taken advantage of that law in pursuit of the best educational environment for their kids. I don't like administrators substituting their judgment for parents', no matter how ostensibly worthy or even noble the goals. They're playing with other people's futures, and they shouldn't. The enrollment at several Boulder Valley schools is now going to be artificially curtailed in order to force kids into schools their parents have already indicated they didn't want to choose, all for the purpose of pursuing a "desirable" ethnic mix. I think it's social engineering at its worse.

Mark(Q) Are you at all optimistic that Manual High School can be saved?
Vincent_Carroll(A) By saved, I take it mean not temporarily closed. No, I don't think the opponents of closure are going to succeed in stopping it. The school will be closed next year and reopen sometime later. The more interesting question is whether the next version of Manual will do any better at educating minority kids than the present school, which is doing a horrible, horrible job. Superintendent Bennet and board president Pena sent a letter to two previous mayors this week outlining the almost unbelievable statistics on minority underachievement - not only at Manual but throughout the district. Only a handful of black and Hispanic kids in 10th grade were judged proficient in math, for example, at Manual and only a few handfuls of such kids were proficient in the entire district in math. DPS has got to do better - and I say that as one who believes we mustn't let parents and the students themselves off the hook either.

Mark(Q) You took exception to Time magazine putting Wayne Allard on its list of the five "worst" Senators.
Vincent_Carroll(A) Yes, for a number of reasons. First off, I think you could find five senators who are actually embarrassments to the institution, because of how they conduct themselves or because of their total lack of political principle. More than five, actually; maybe several times five. Allard doesn't fall into that category and Time admitted that. Its big beef was that Allard isn't influential among his colleagues or a leader in crafting legislation. I think the magazine's description is correct in that regard up to a point, and is certainly why Allard can't possibly be rated as one of the better senators. But I'd put him somewhere in the middle of the pack because he is pretty much what he presents himself to be: a solid conservative who votes, usually, for restraint on the size of government, taxes and regulation. Time obviously had a bias in its criteria for senatorial activism, which cuts against the ratings of conservatives.

Mark(Q) via e-mail: Is Tony Snow a good choice as White House press secretary?
Vincent_Carroll(A) Oh, yes. I met Tony back in the 1980s when he was a fellow newspaper editorial writer, and was impressed then with his intelligence and poise. He knows journalism, how journalists operate, and is on a stature equal even to the media celebrities who populate the White House press corps. They'll be more inclined to treat him seriously and he'll be better able to understand where they're coming from, so I think it's a great choice. And it's very surprising, I might add, that he took the job.