Politics Today

The “Externalized” Costs of Our Energy Supply

Tue, 11 May 2010 14:10:36 -0500

Last month, 29 people died underground in West Virginia in an explosion of accumulated methane gas. Three weeks later, 11 people perished when the Deep Horizon floating oil platform exploded, burned out of control (see how puny the massive fireboats called in to fight the fire look in the amazing picture above), and sank. A week later, 2 miners perished in Kentucky, not 30 miles from where I live, when the roof of the mine in which they were working collapsed.

As of this writing, both BP and the government estimate that oil from the Deep Horizon failure is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of five thousand barrels a day. However, independent analysts at SkyTruth, a nonprofit which specializes in gathering and interpreting satellite and aerial data to promote environmental conservation, estimates that there is an average of 20,000 barrels of oil per day spilling into the Gulf. That would make for about 6 million barrels thus far, and could eventually make this the worst oil spill in history - greater than the 11 million gallons spilled in the Exxon Valdez fiasco.

These human and environmental costs of our energy consumption habits are largely “externalized,” which is to say, they are costs that will not appear on the books of either BP or Massey Energy. The water, air, and human life - not to mention the plant and animal life affected by things like Mountain Top Removal mining, or massive oil spills - are considered “free goods” by companies that dump fumes into the air, oil and tailings into the water, and human life into early graves, or into oblivion - remains have yet to be found of the 11 roughnecks sacrificed to the short-term profits of BP.

Believe it or not, it’s not as bad - or at least as obvious - as it used to be. Before the Clean Air Act, people who lived around wood mills or refineries just got used to their eyes stinging when the wind blew the wrong direction. Asthma was just something some folks got, and wasn’t linked to environmental abuse. Before the Clean Water Act, rivers would routinely be banned from swimming and fishing, and sometimes would even catch fire. The number of species that went extinct will never be known, and the number threatened was in the hundreds as a result of our rapacious practices.

But our burgeoning population, combined with our insatiable appetite for energy, has undone many of the gains we saw as a result of environmental legislation passed in the seventies, and it’s now time to take firm and painful measures to reduce our consumption while creating funding that will be available to clean up any major messes. Here’s what I propose, not as a finished product, but as a starting point:

Companies engaged in energy exploration of any sort should have to purchase some sort of catastrophic failure insurance. Actuaries being who they are, companies with more reckless environmental records would pay higher premiums.
Gasoline should be priced at $4.50/gallon. Any money above the actual costs of production & delivery (including, of course, paying for folks’ living) would go into a National Environmental Response Fund (NERF). This would not underwrite any new exploration or drilling, or be used to in any way subsidize the acquisition of energy. Nor would it be used to pad shareholder’s returns. It would be used only in the event of a major catastrophe, both to clean up messes, and compensate victims and survivors. Any money spent from this fund would be billed directly to the company whose mess is being cleaned up.
Coal and Natural Gas should be priced at 25 cents/kilowatt hour. Currently, I pay (once I’ve converted therms to kilowatt hours) 4.3 cents/kilowatt hour now, which is hardly a incentive to conserve. Any money collected above actual production & distribution costs would go into the NERF.
In any given year, Congress may, at its discretion, set aside up to 20 percent of the previous year’s NERF receipts to be used to subsidize solar, wind, and other “green” development at the consumer level. Sort of a “Cash for Conversion” program.

These four policy changes, taken together, would discourage unnecessary consumption, discourage corporate rapacity, create a monetary vehicle for quickly responding to environmental catastrophe, and accelerate a grassroots conversion to sustainable energy sources.

A Retarded Idea: Censorship and the War on Ideas

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:32:00 -0600

I was left laughing by the news lately, dumbstruck by the failure of logic in in the response to the recent blow-up over Rahm Emanuel’s use of the word “retarded” in describing the ideas presented by some progressive groups at a White House strategy planning session. The groups were presenting an idea for attack ads targeting conservative Democrats who were holding up health care reform, and Emanuel (above) called the idea “retarded,” saying that the support of the very people being targeted would be essential to passing the larger agenda.

That happened back in August of 2009, but the word got out in mid-February, so naturally Emanuel had to apologize.

To the progressive groups?

No!

To the head of the Special Olympics, a person he hadn’t even been talking to. Many others then piled on. Sarah Palin, mother of a retarded child, used her Facebook page for a rambling post that started out talking about the debt and ended up equating use of the word “retarded” with use of the word “nigger,” which it is in one chilling respect: there are forces at work to remove each word from our language.

Now, no one will deny that “nigger” has, as a word, been used far more in our language to demean than to elevate human understanding, but that doesn’t mean that the word “nigger” can’t be used to elevate human understanding. There are just too many examples, but I can toss off The Student As Nigger, by Jerry Farber, and Woman is the Nigger of the World, by John Lennon, as two pieces of writing - one an essay and the other a song - that use the word “nigger” precisely to elevate human understanding.

Unlike “nigger,” the word “retarded” has not been used to demean others to the same degree, and is not so universally acknowledged to be primarily a term of derision when applied to other people. Very often, it describes a condition; one of being slower than average, either mentally or physically, depending on how it’s applied. Nevertheless, there is a movement afoot, among the hypersensitive in the “special needs” community, to eliminate the word from our vocabulary.

The primary target of this campaign is the word “retard,” with emphasis on the first syllable, and which, like “nigger,” is more clearly a term lending itself to use primarily in demeaning others. But Rahm Emanuel didn’t use the word “retard,” he said “retarded,” in reference to ideas, not individuals. The fact that he felt compelled - in the media shitstorm that followed the publication of his utterance -
to apologize for simply using a word, indicates how slippery the slope can be when language itself is subject to censorship.

This is because the primary purpose behind banning language is always to attempt to prevent the dissemination the idea or ideas which the language attempts to express. But language is flexible and organic enough that even words like “nigger” can be used to contribute to greater tolerance and understanding. Language censors need to understand that censoring words will not censor an idea whose time has come, for other words will always be found and combined in order to express and disseminate the idea.

To think otherwise is, well, retarded.

Put The “Public” Back Into Public Health

Tue, 19 May 2009 22:27:45 -0500

In a White House meeting last Tuesday, representatives of the insurance industry promised President Obama that they'll cut health care cost inflation by 1.5% a year.

Whoopee. Heath care costs are actually rising by more than 6% a year, and the industry is only promising voluntary efforts to trim that, hoping against hope that they're not held to that legislatively.

This is just the latest attempt by the health insurance industry - remember the "Harry and Louise" advertisements of 1993, paid for by the Health Insurance Association of America? - to derail the health care reform we need.

The only way to real reform for patients and premium payers is to allow the option of a public insurance plan. Such an option will compel the insurance industry to find the savings they've promised, and will give Americans something besides private insurers should private insurers fail to cut costs in a meaningful way.

In testimony before a house committee on health care reform, Princeton economics professor Uwe Reinhardt cut to the chase: "At one end of the ideological spectrum, many Americans appear to believe that health care ought to be treated as a private consumer good that should be distributed on the basis of market principles....At the other end of the ideological spectrum, just as many other Americans...believe that our health care system should be viewed as a social good."

The social good voters won the last two national elections, and believe that the option of a public insurance plan will help to promote that social good. I agree with them.

Those who cry "socialized medicine!" overlook both the Veterans Administration's health care system and Medicare/Medicaid, both of which are public plans, and which have provided better care cheaper than the private insurance industry for the last fifty years.

Congress and the President should not listen to the insurance companies; they should listen to voters. They must pass health care reform this year that gives us the option of a public plan.

The Natural Course of Capitalist Economics

Fri, 8 May 2009 21:59:48 -0500

When Tim Geithner was confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury, the victory of Corporate Socialism over Social Capitalism was also confirmed - at least for the time being.

Geithner, formerly president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Group of 30, both bastions of corporate protectionism, insofar as their viewpoint is so broad that macroeconomics is the only economics of which they appear to be aware.

In such a view, local economies are inconsequential; or at least, small rural communities and the local economies on which they are traditionally based are invisible, and of value only to the degree that they can be commandeered by global corporate interests, their cultural, human, and natural riches simply resources to be exploited. These corporate socialist’s vision is so “broad” that they can’t see the trees for the forest, and really don’t care to.

It is unfortunate that Wall Streeters and Fed Presidents still are given positions of prominence within the Department of the Treasury. Most of what the Department has done - more during the Clinton & Bush years, but continuing today - is to protect the natural concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. This concentration of wealth is the natural course of purely Capitalist economics, and has been since Adam Smith. Keeping this natural concentration of wealth in check is the primary reason why democratic governments have been instituted among people.

The role of the US government is to forestall, arrest, and reverse this concentration in ways that, as the preamble to the US Constitution says, help to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Allowing corporate interests to assume a greater importance than citizens makes the government a partner in the forced and enforced servitude of the governed to those corporations whom the government now determines to be “too big to fail.” This is not the “Blessing of Liberty,” it is the curse of tyranny.

From Shame and Sham to Hope and Hard Work

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:02:04 -0500

My last post to this blog took place in January of 2007, and it’s now March of 2009. In the interim, I’ve moved back across country to Indiana, opened a bindery in my home, taken a job at a public library as a reference librarian, and pretty much ignored all of my personal blogs.

I feel it’s time to begin paying attention again. Much has changed - George Bush has left the White House and the Presidency in shame and humiliation, widely regarded as the worst president in recent history, if not the sum of US history. Barack Obama has made the history everyone has already blogged about, and is now trying to address the multitude of systemic weaknesses left by Bush’s combination of tax breaks for the wealthy, deregulation, dual occupations in the Middle East, and environmental degradation and non-enforcement.

The latest political pissing contest appears to be to see who can appear the most outraged about the bonuses paid to AGI employees who actually helped to run the company into the ground. The bonuses amount to less that half of one percent of the taxpayer money they received; no one thus far has asked for an accounting of the other 99.5 percent.

The last two years, politically, have unfolded much as I had half hope and half expected after the mid-term elections. What I said in November of 2006 is a large part of what propelled Obama to the White House: “What’s important now is that citizens -- those of us who caused this sea-change -- keep involved, and not let one extreme or the other grab the agenda.”

It remains important - extremely so - for the grassroots to remain as active in making sure the Change we voted for becomes legislatively enacted. Obama has made a great start; stay involved.

Bill Moyers: Tell Your Story

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 18:40:01 -0600

“In our brief sojourn here we are on a great journey. For those who came before us and for those who follow, our moral, political and religious duty is to make sure that this nation, which was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal, is in good hands on our watch.”

Those word by Bill Moyers are taken from an article entitled For America’s Sake, published in the January 22nd issue of The Nation. Please take the time to read the entire thing. If you agree with Moyers that “More and more people agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics is corrupting democracy and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help when the market system fails to generate shared prosperity,” then you might want to check out Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, by George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute. This book is a short, pithy guide to progressives for finding your voice and using it to change the direction of politics in America, which is all about what Moyers is talking about. Thinking Points is on sale at most bookstores for $10.00, but you can also download the entire thing off the web - one chapter at a time - for free, at the link I put there at the title.

Incidentally, if you want to watch Moyers deliver a portion of his article as a speech sponsored by The Nation, Demos, The Brennan Center for Justice, and the New Democracy Project, here it is:

Two Deaths: Happy New Year

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 01:20:50 -0600

Our ostensibly pro-life administration is caught up this weekend in the spinning of two deaths. One, we are told we should celebrate as justice finally served; the other, we are told we should mourn, and in fact, we are officially mourning as a nation, with state funerals, flags at half-staff: the whole nine yards.

Federal offices have even decided to put off the “official” day of mourning until Tuesday, and cynics will be justified in thinking that this conveniently prolongs the New Year holiday.

Saddam was a beast, and whether or not one believes that his trial was fair, the sentence was commensurate with the charges on which he was convicted.

Gerald Ford, being a former president, is being given a pass he simply does not deserve. As the only un-elected President of the United States (and Vice-President, too, due to the at-that-time unprecedented corruption of the Nixon/Agnew administration) he needs to be held to a much higher standard, and he fails even the moderate standard test.

His pardon of Nixon prior to criminal proceedings is being painted in the media as a “healing” gesture that helped the country recover from the “long national nightmare” - Ford’s words - of Watergate.

I disagree. I think that, as Saddam’s execution is considered “justice,” that Nixon’s prosecution would’ve been the same, and would’ve done more to heal the country than letting a plainly criminal President off scott free. In fact, I believe that the pardon of Nixon cheapened the moral standard to which the Presidency is held to such a degree that the off-the-shelf, extra-Constitutional behavior of the Reagan cabinet (Poindexter, North, and company) in the Iran/Contra affair -- which was a much more blatant and egregious violation of the trust of the office of the Presidency than Watergate -- was greeted by the public with an “oh well, they’re all corrupt anyway” mentality.

The corruption of the current Bush is even more brazen: Detention without charge, wiretapping citizens without subpoena, outing CIA operatives, preemptive war... Do I really need to list them all again?

People asking “where’s the outrage?” should be reminded that a good deal of righteous outrage was snuffed by Gerald Ford when he issued that chicken-shit pardon. A Nixon spending his last years behind bars would’ve been a constant reminder to the people of their true power, and a constant reminder to those in power about the depths to which one could truly fall in grubbing for power that rightly belongs to the people.

If you think that sounds Socialist, it’s not; it’s American. Once again, for everyone’s edification, here is the Ninth Article of the Bill of Rights: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Bill O’Reilly Was Wrong: It’s A “Holiday Tree”

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:02:00 -0600

By now, the entire US has heard about the recent round of Grinchiness at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac), where an over-reaction by Port of Seattle authorities to a lawsuit threatened by local Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky because the Port wouldn’t put up a Menorah led to the removal of all “Christmas Trees” from the entrances to Sea-Tac

When faced with a huge public outcry by people of many - and of no particular - faiths, the Rabbi made clear it was never his intention to file a lawsuit, and Sea-Tac quickly reinstalled the renamed “Holiday Trees.”

Which is as it should be. No one will find any reference to a “Christmas Tree” in any of the New Testament accounts of Christ’s nativity, because trees have nothing to do with it. The tree has roots (no pun intended) in European Pagan traditions surrounding the Winter Solstice (December 22nd) when Evergreen trees, because they remained green when all other plant life had died, were seen to have a special power over death.

Ancient Germanic peoples tied fruit and attached candles to evergreen tree branches, in honor of their god Woden, the deity after which Wednesday is named, and who, incidentally, was hung from the tree called Yggdrasill while pierced by his own spear, an interesting parallel to another, later crucifixion.

Trees were viewed as symbolizing eternal life. The trees joined holly, mistletoe, the wassail bowl and the Yule log as symbols of the season. All predated Christianity.

Many religions, great and small, celebrate a “Festival of Lights,” and all are held to celebrate the beginning of the end of the season of darkness. They include the Jewish Hanukkah (celebrated for 8 days in the Hebrew month of Kislev, usually in mid-to-late December), the Hindu Diwali (date varies but is celebrated on the lunar new year), and the Pagan Imbolic (Brigit’s/Bride’s Day in Ireland, and Christianized into Candlemas, celebrated on February 2nd), to name but a few of the most well-known.

The lighted holiday tree invokes them all. It should be obvious then, that taking them down because they promote a particular religious viewpoint is very shortsighted.

In point of fact, if Sea-Tac were to set up a Menorah, it will only be a matter of time before devotees of particular faiths would be clamoring to erect Crescents & Stars, Inverted Pentagrams, Earthen Lanterns, and - no doubt - Crosses.

So no: we don’t celebrate one holy day, we recognize that this is the time of year when people all over the planet celebrate many holy days. We recognize this through the secular and syncretic symbol of the Tree of Light and Life.

Happy Holidays!

What A Difference A Day Makes!

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:00:12 -0600

Just three days ago I made a pleading post urging everyone to vote, and making a case for both the need to vote, and the need to conduct mass protests if the vote appeared seriously compromised.

November 7th came and went, and with it went all claims to legitimacy that President Bush had. Don Rumsfeld was his sacrificial lamb, but any indication that this was in the plan was certainly not apparent in an Associated Press interview on November 1:

Q: Assuming their health holds up, do you want Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to be with you until the end?

Bush: Both those men are doing fantastic jobs. And I strongly support them.

Q: Up until the end - you see them staying with you until the end?

Bush: I do.

Q: So you're expecting Rumsfeld - Secretary Rumsfeld to stay on the rest of your time here?

Bush: Yes, I am.

So let’s make it clear: if the Democrats hadn’t ridden roughshod over the Republicans,earlier in the week, we’d still be stuck with Rumsfeld, still be listening to idiots without a plan debate the semantic differences between “staying the course” and “cutting and running,” still have to listen to Bush blather on about “Defeatocrats” and other such horse manure.

It really was wonderful listening to Bush make excuses for Republican losses, but my favorite - being as I’m a librarian - was Bush’s excuse that Karl Rove had spent too much time reading books. Yes, that has to be it. What person in their right mind can win steal an election when their chief campaign advisor has their nose in a book?
I’d better start learning now

Ironically, another factor that may have contributed to the large victory for the Democrats was the strength of the Republican get-out-the-vote effort. It turns out that a large number of moderate Republicans switched sides to vote Democratic; a point that Democrats have to remember, lest they be tempted to swing too far back to the left.

What’s important now is that citizens -- those of us who caused this sea-change -- keep involved, and not let one extreme or the other grab the agenda. It’s the bread-and-butter issues, like good insurance, inexpensive medicines for grandma and grandpa, increasing the minimum wage and generally pulling up the forgotten and struggling lower and lower-middle class, that will keep winning elections. If Democrats can do this, while rebuilding our credibility internationally, and repealing a few of the more egregious and debt-producing tax cuts, they’ll have a very clear shot at the presidency in a couple of years.

But not by running John Kerry. But that’ll have to wait until the next post.

Now Is The Time - VOTE! But Get Ready to Lose

Mon, 6 Nov 2006 20:37:23 -0600

Misleading a nation into war, Bin Laden still at large, habeas corpus thrown out the window, New Orleans, Terri Schiavo, outing an undercover CIA operative, Abu Ghraib, smearing a Vietnam veteran Senator who lost his limbs in combat, no bid contracts, Swiftboating, cronyism, “extraordinary rendition,” using and duping good people of good faith, releasing nuclear secrets online, Jack Abramoff... The list just goes on and on, to the point where citizens who love what this country stands for must stand up and say ENOUGH! Surely no one who voted for President Bush or Republican leadership voted for this litany of sorrow, lies, waste, and incompetence.

Well, tomorrow’s your opportunity. Please, please, please, if you do nothing else tomorrow: Vote. The tide is set in favor of a turnover of at least one, and very possibly both Chambers of the national legislature. But don’t take it from me; listen to a respected Republican prognosticator. It appears that fear of terror isn’t going to be a major selling point in this election, as a recently released CNN poll indicates that 25% of Americans felt safer before 9/11.

But brace yourself for taking to the streets - Orange Revolution-style - when the Republicans steal the election again. Again? Yes, as Mark Crispin Miller said in a recent Washington Spectator column, “That Bush/Cheney stole their "re-election" is not a "theory" but a fact that has by now been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

The Spectator column is a must read for those complacent about small-d democracy in this country. This extended quote ought to be chilling enough:

We must delve into the recent past, not to quibble over ancient numbers but to find out where we really are today. For what happened in some states four years ago, and in most states two years ago, is still happening now, and in more states than ever: a vast, complex and incremental process of mass disenfranchisement—which is, in fact, the only way the Bush Republicans could ever get "elected," as their program is not conservative but radical, irrational, apocalyptic: i.e., unacceptable to most Americans, liberals and true conservatives alike.

That gives us another reason to vote: the greater we can make the turnout, the more massive - and therefore apparent - the fraud has to be in order to elect these crooks. VOTE! Get your neighbor to vote! Tell your friends to vote!