Cash for Caulkers

Inexplicably, President Obama prefers venture capitalist John Doerr's "cash for caulkers" to Bill Sweet's cash for (coal) clunkers, at least so far. In  a jobs speech delivered yesterday at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Obama said he might introduce a special home retrofit program, to supplement subsidies in the stimulus bill and make it still easier and cheaper for homeowners to make dwellings more energy-efficient and conserving. The Daily Show's John Stewart poked fun at him Monday night for saying he didn't want to "tip his hand," as if he were giving away a secret. Obama has mentioned the idea repeatedly all year, as Stewart observed, and the concept has got analytic attention in the press and on the air.