Airplanes Greener than Trains?
Jun 08, 2009 10:14 Filed in: Environment
Strange as it may seem, when everything that it takes
to deliver a passenger by train from one place to
another is taken into account, including the cost of
cars, engines, tracks, stations, and other railroad
infrastructure, CO2 emissions per
passenger-mile of trains is actually greater than the
total emissions of CO2 per passenger-mile of
commercial aircraft.
That is the conclusion of researchers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of the University of California, Berkeley, as reported in NewScientist online via the newsletter from Scientists & Engineers for America:
Train can be worse for climate than plane
The article points out, however, that the concentration of passengers is critical. A city bus with only 5 passengers is one of the worst offenders, whereas a full city bus is relatively efficient. The same goes for autos and planes.
The lessons: 1. no matter how certain we are, things are not always what they seem; and 2. looking at the big picture frequently invalidates the lessons we learned from looking only at the small picture.
That is the conclusion of researchers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of the University of California, Berkeley, as reported in NewScientist online via the newsletter from Scientists & Engineers for America:
Train can be worse for climate than plane
The article points out, however, that the concentration of passengers is critical. A city bus with only 5 passengers is one of the worst offenders, whereas a full city bus is relatively efficient. The same goes for autos and planes.
The lessons: 1. no matter how certain we are, things are not always what they seem; and 2. looking at the big picture frequently invalidates the lessons we learned from looking only at the small picture.
|
Watching Home
Jun 05, 2009 21:26 Filed in: Environment
I spent the evening at the Rainbow Coop watching the
movie Home. It’s about climate
change and it is quite convincing. Everyone
concerned about the future of the human race
should watch it.
The scientific evidence is overwhelming that our civilization is creating almost insurmountable problems for the human race by heating up the planet, and that if we are to avoid almost certain catastrophe there will have to be drastic changes that will affect every one of us.
Climate change skeptics are either deliberately blinding themselves to the evidence, or they are being highly paid to prevaricate.
Dr. James Burke made a two-hour movie about global warming around 15 years ago, After the Warming, and it seemed to have no impact whatever. Now that the ice cap at the North Pole is fast disappearing, perhaps Home will get a better reception.
Watch it on YouTube. It’s about an hour and 33 minutes in length.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
The scientific evidence is overwhelming that our civilization is creating almost insurmountable problems for the human race by heating up the planet, and that if we are to avoid almost certain catastrophe there will have to be drastic changes that will affect every one of us.
Climate change skeptics are either deliberately blinding themselves to the evidence, or they are being highly paid to prevaricate.
Dr. James Burke made a two-hour movie about global warming around 15 years ago, After the Warming, and it seemed to have no impact whatever. Now that the ice cap at the North Pole is fast disappearing, perhaps Home will get a better reception.
Watch it on YouTube. It’s about an hour and 33 minutes in length.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
Obama's Cairo Speech
Obama gave a stemwinder of a speech yesterday in Cairo.
The
press was duly impressed and laudatory, for
the most part, but others pointed out that the
main thing Obama changed was the mood.
I am optimistic; before U. S. policy can change for the better, the conversation must first change. The speech was aimed mainly towards the American public, and, considering the demonization of Islam and its adherents we have seen in the post 9/11 period, it is indeed a breath of fresh air.
It committed Obama to nothing substantial and concrete, however, and that was surely by design. The political mindscape must change before the political landscape can be transformed. Simply by treating Islam and muslims with respect, Obama is altering the mindscape.
I am optimistic; before U. S. policy can change for the better, the conversation must first change. The speech was aimed mainly towards the American public, and, considering the demonization of Islam and its adherents we have seen in the post 9/11 period, it is indeed a breath of fresh air.
It committed Obama to nothing substantial and concrete, however, and that was surely by design. The political mindscape must change before the political landscape can be transformed. Simply by treating Islam and muslims with respect, Obama is altering the mindscape.
A Special Prosecutor for Torture?
Should the Department of Justice or a special
prosecutor prosecute the Bush administration officials
responsible for the authorization of torture? David
Corn explores the problems in a thoughtful article
on the Mother Jones web site.
The question is “What do we want?” Do we want to know what really happened, or do we want convictions? We may not be able to get both.
As Corn points out, Patrick Fitzgerald unearthed far more wrongdoing than he was able to disclose, due to the rules and regulations that control the prosecutor’s office. Since he concluded that he did not have enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rove, Chaney and a number of other officials were guilty of crimes, the evidence he had collected could not be disclosed. His hands were tied.
In other words, if the Obama administration prosecutes we may get neither truth nor convictions.
Congressional hearings and even independent commissions have their weaknesses, too. The members of the 9/11 Commission were clearly chosen to favor the government’s version of events and to ignore evidence that conflicted with the that version.
Congressional hearings can turn into three-ring circuses when the stakes are high and one party feels threatened. When members of both parties are compromised, the truth will never emerge.
As I mentioned the other day, Obama’s decision to release the secret memos authorizing torture was most likely designed to test the level of outrage among the public, and thus enable him to gauge the support that he would receive were he to prosecute.
Prosecuting the previous administration carries serious political risks, not the least of which is that the Supreme Court could declare the president immune from prosecution for acts taken in his capacity as commander-in-chief on matters of national security. If you think this is far-fetched, consider that in 2000 the court , on specious legal grounds, stopped the vote recount in Florida and thus determined the outcome of the presidential election in favor of George Bush. The justices appointed since then, having been ideologically vetted before being nominated by Bush and confirmed by a Republican Senate, have not demonstrated that they would have any more scruples about stretching the Constitution to protect Bush and Cheney from prosecution.
It’s a tough question. The only workable solution may be truth and reconciliation commissions modeled partially after South Africa. Persons who are willing to appear before a commission and confess their crimes get a break, ranging from amnesty in the least serious cases, to a reduced sentence in the more heinous ones.
There are serious moral and legal problems inherent with truth commissions, however. As a general proposition, persons who have abused the public trust should not be allowed to escape the consequences of their actions, especially when their misdeeds have resulted in the death and suffering of so many innocent persons. To persuade guilty parties to submit to the commissions, the government must be willing to back up such commissions by prosecuting those who either refuse to appear, perjure themselves, or hold back from telling the entire truth.
Individuals without remorse would have to face the full force of the criminal law. This would probably involve, at the very least, putting Dick Cheney on trial, as he is unlikely to ever admit wrongdoing.
The question is “What do we want?” Do we want to know what really happened, or do we want convictions? We may not be able to get both.
As Corn points out, Patrick Fitzgerald unearthed far more wrongdoing than he was able to disclose, due to the rules and regulations that control the prosecutor’s office. Since he concluded that he did not have enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rove, Chaney and a number of other officials were guilty of crimes, the evidence he had collected could not be disclosed. His hands were tied.
In other words, if the Obama administration prosecutes we may get neither truth nor convictions.
Congressional hearings and even independent commissions have their weaknesses, too. The members of the 9/11 Commission were clearly chosen to favor the government’s version of events and to ignore evidence that conflicted with the that version.
Congressional hearings can turn into three-ring circuses when the stakes are high and one party feels threatened. When members of both parties are compromised, the truth will never emerge.
As I mentioned the other day, Obama’s decision to release the secret memos authorizing torture was most likely designed to test the level of outrage among the public, and thus enable him to gauge the support that he would receive were he to prosecute.
Prosecuting the previous administration carries serious political risks, not the least of which is that the Supreme Court could declare the president immune from prosecution for acts taken in his capacity as commander-in-chief on matters of national security. If you think this is far-fetched, consider that in 2000 the court , on specious legal grounds, stopped the vote recount in Florida and thus determined the outcome of the presidential election in favor of George Bush. The justices appointed since then, having been ideologically vetted before being nominated by Bush and confirmed by a Republican Senate, have not demonstrated that they would have any more scruples about stretching the Constitution to protect Bush and Cheney from prosecution.
It’s a tough question. The only workable solution may be truth and reconciliation commissions modeled partially after South Africa. Persons who are willing to appear before a commission and confess their crimes get a break, ranging from amnesty in the least serious cases, to a reduced sentence in the more heinous ones.
There are serious moral and legal problems inherent with truth commissions, however. As a general proposition, persons who have abused the public trust should not be allowed to escape the consequences of their actions, especially when their misdeeds have resulted in the death and suffering of so many innocent persons. To persuade guilty parties to submit to the commissions, the government must be willing to back up such commissions by prosecuting those who either refuse to appear, perjure themselves, or hold back from telling the entire truth.
Individuals without remorse would have to face the full force of the criminal law. This would probably involve, at the very least, putting Dick Cheney on trial, as he is unlikely to ever admit wrongdoing.
Poor Obama!
Poor Obama! He made the egregious mistake of releasing
secret memos written by legal prostitutes in the Bush
administration justifying torture, and now, as a
result, pressure is building for legislative, possibly
criminal, investigations of said whores and the higher
officials who ordered the memos.
Obama could have saved himself all this trouble with the judicious use of a shredder and some Cheneyesque stonewalling.
Now it’s too late. He may eventually be forced, kicking and screaming, to authorize criminal investigations, and, heaven forbid, even prosecutions.
He should have known that this would happen.
Obama could have saved himself all this trouble with the judicious use of a shredder and some Cheneyesque stonewalling.
Now it’s too late. He may eventually be forced, kicking and screaming, to authorize criminal investigations, and, heaven forbid, even prosecutions.
He should have known that this would happen.
Candidates Answer Green Survey
Apr 23, 2009 18:36 Filed in: Local
Candidates for municipal offices in Jackson were asked
to share with readers their vision and plan fir moving
the City of Jackson toward more efficient and
sustainable use of natural resources. Here
are the results.
Some of the answers are very thoughtful, others perfunctory, and one clearly shows its author to be a Swiftian yahoo. I guess that’s par for the course.
Some of the answers are very thoughtful, others perfunctory, and one clearly shows its author to be a Swiftian yahoo. I guess that’s par for the course.
Sunday Thoughts from Several Weeks Ago
Apr 18, 2009 12:47 Filed in: Politics
Subjects Progressivism
Any political policy, belief, or theory contains a
vision of what the world should be like. That vision is
seldom explicit, often unconscious, and sometimes
secret, at least in its purest, most unembellished
form.
Political dialogue, it it is to be productive, must address this vision, or else it misses the mark.
The ideal polity arises from the projections of our own shadow material onto both the world and the deity that created it (or the physical processes that made it, depending upon one’s belief). Most people do not know why they are attracted to a conservative, liberal or progressive position, because the attraction has its origin in their unconscious.
A conservative vision is easier to come by than a progressive vision, because it is based upon an appealing past. It draws much of its strength from our tendency to forget unpleasant experiences and remember only the pleasant. We are easily convinced that there existed an ideal era, a veritable Garden of Eden, of which evil people and forces have deprived us, and—if we can only defeat those evil forces—Eden will be restored. In our current era, the evil people and forces are represented as misguided do-gooders, socialists and redistributionists that have poisoned the well of pure capitalism and the free market.
At its heart, the conservative vision is profoundly elitist and anti-democratic. Societies governed by conservative principles are invariably plutocracies or timocracies. The few rule and take what they want; the many obey and try to live on the crumbs left over. The first task of the conservative thinker, then, is to conceal this ugly reality from his followers, a task made easier by the almost universal ignorance of history. If he is a decent person, he will have to explain it away to himself first, a task made somewhat easier by the financial support of the elites themselves.
A progressive vision arises from the idea of a possible future different from the past but better than the present. It must change, however, in the face of empirical evidence, or it will become another conservative vision. The progressive vision, therefore, is wedded to reality, which is continually in flux. The conservatives have Plato and the eternal forms. The progressives have Socrates with his questioning and Heraclitus with his river.
To a progressive, the past is teacher, not master. What worked in the past may or may not work today or in the future. Every significant advance of the human race was, by definition, unprecedented. Faulkner notwithstanding, the past is really past, and a society based upon the contrary assumption is sick. A society that believes in an imaginary past that is not yet past is insane.
The weakness of the progressive vision is that it requires imagination and a willingness to question what society accepts as eternal verities. Some “eternal” verities do persist throughout the ages, but many of them serve only to preserve the power and position of elites. Therefore, public progressivism requires political courage, a rare virtue.
Political dialogue, it it is to be productive, must address this vision, or else it misses the mark.
The ideal polity arises from the projections of our own shadow material onto both the world and the deity that created it (or the physical processes that made it, depending upon one’s belief). Most people do not know why they are attracted to a conservative, liberal or progressive position, because the attraction has its origin in their unconscious.
A conservative vision is easier to come by than a progressive vision, because it is based upon an appealing past. It draws much of its strength from our tendency to forget unpleasant experiences and remember only the pleasant. We are easily convinced that there existed an ideal era, a veritable Garden of Eden, of which evil people and forces have deprived us, and—if we can only defeat those evil forces—Eden will be restored. In our current era, the evil people and forces are represented as misguided do-gooders, socialists and redistributionists that have poisoned the well of pure capitalism and the free market.
At its heart, the conservative vision is profoundly elitist and anti-democratic. Societies governed by conservative principles are invariably plutocracies or timocracies. The few rule and take what they want; the many obey and try to live on the crumbs left over. The first task of the conservative thinker, then, is to conceal this ugly reality from his followers, a task made easier by the almost universal ignorance of history. If he is a decent person, he will have to explain it away to himself first, a task made somewhat easier by the financial support of the elites themselves.
A progressive vision arises from the idea of a possible future different from the past but better than the present. It must change, however, in the face of empirical evidence, or it will become another conservative vision. The progressive vision, therefore, is wedded to reality, which is continually in flux. The conservatives have Plato and the eternal forms. The progressives have Socrates with his questioning and Heraclitus with his river.
To a progressive, the past is teacher, not master. What worked in the past may or may not work today or in the future. Every significant advance of the human race was, by definition, unprecedented. Faulkner notwithstanding, the past is really past, and a society based upon the contrary assumption is sick. A society that believes in an imaginary past that is not yet past is insane.
The weakness of the progressive vision is that it requires imagination and a willingness to question what society accepts as eternal verities. Some “eternal” verities do persist throughout the ages, but many of them serve only to preserve the power and position of elites. Therefore, public progressivism requires political courage, a rare virtue.
Seizing the Bully Pulpit
It is now clear that Obama’s presidency will be a
very public presidency. In the two and a half months
since his inauguration, he has likely accumulated more
media exposure than George Bush did in his first two
years of office.
No one who has studied the Obama campaign has failed to be impressed with his strategic focus, that is, his ability and willingness to sacrifice immediate gains in the interest of ultimate victory. Long before the primaries, Obama had determined what was and was not essential to winning the Democratic nomination and general election, and, although he was quick to change tactics that were not working, his strategic plan to obtain a majority of convention delegates and then electoral votes remained relatively constant.
So when Obama makes himself accessible to the media to the extent that he has done, one can be fairly certain that such openness is not necessarily an exercise in ego-gratification, but the result of cold, hard calculations about what he must do to govern.
For reasons not immediately relevant to this discussion, George Bush speaks execrably in public, his speech consisting of little more than sentence fragments, malapropisms, oxymorons and grammatical train-wrecks that would have made Will Rogers blush. Yet it is universally conceded that this limitation did not hinder him in 2000 or 2004, when he came so close to winning both elections over far more able opponents, that—with a little help from his father’s appointees at the U. S. Supreme Court in 2000 and Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell in 2004—he became president both times. Not only did he become president, he was able to effectively push his right-wing political and economic agendas through Congress with little need to appeal personally to the public.
Bush could do this because he had a distinct advantage over Obama: the corporate media is inherently conservative. It goes without saying that, since its founding, the Fox empire has functioned as an arm of the Republican Party. The other networks, however, all of them either megacorporations or subsidiaries of megacorporations, have remained strongly biased toward right-wing, conservative positions on almost all the major public issues. NBC, for example, is owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor. ABC is a subsidiary of Disney, and CBS is the result of a merger with Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which at the time of the merger was a major defense contractor. The majority of “experts” who regularly appear on the networks are right-wing, or, at best, middle of the road, which in today’s context means Republican lite. In such an environment, progressive alternatives to the corporatist agenda never make it to the public.
The media, in other words, did much of Bush’s speaking for him. During Clinton’s presidency, the media, under the guise of objective reporting, served mainly as an echo chamber for the Republican Party and relayed uncritically their attacks on Clinton at every opportunity. Given this history, we can reasonably expect that Obama will get virtually no help from the same media that gave Bush a pass at every turn. They will seize upon even the slightest slip-ups by Obama and his family, and if the inevitable mistakes fail to appear, they will be fabricated as the needs arise, like the recent “outrage” over Mrs. Obama’s improperly touching the queen of England.
Obama’s response to this state of affairs has been to seize and wield the bully pulpit more effectively than any president since Jack Kennedy. Having observed that silence in the face of innuendoes, half-truths, and outright lies is fatal to a progressive politician, that the truth may or may not ultimately out by itself, and that it is political suicide to depend upon the media as a disinterested provider of timely and accurate information to the public, he has, at least up to now, preempted his opponents’ place in the national conversation and is using it to advance a mostly progressive agenda.
The media, accustomed to defining and guiding the national agenda by creating narratives that explain to the public why things are the way they are, has been at least temporally thwarted in exercising its usual role. The power to tell a story that runs around in everyone’s mind—George Lakoff calls it “framing”—is an awesome power, almost godlike. The media made Bush president twice by creating stories about his opponents that they were unable or unwilling to overcome with stories of their own. In both cases, the media stories were mixtures of truth and falsehood that contained just enough of the former to keep them from being rejected outright, and enough of the latter to make people feel uneasy voting for their targets.
In the case of Al Gore, the media story was that Gore was untruthful and boring. He was reported to have claimed that he invented the Internet, and that the novel, Love Story, was written about him and his wife, Tipper.
John Kerry, a recipient of three purple hearts during the Vietnam War, was subjected to a series of scurrilous lies by a group of veterans known as the “Swiftboaters,” who claimed that he did not deserve the medals he received.
Neither Gore nor Kerry successfully overcame the unfavorable and mostly untruthful media narratives that their Republican opponents threw against them.
My disappointment with the Clinton administration is well-documented in the pages of this web site, but his presidency was a failure in many respects because the Republicans and their allies in the media were able to push their own story into the minds of the public—creating a reality that was at odds with the truth—without serious opposition. Bill Clinton came into office with good intentions and high hopes, but a conservative tidal wave, nurtured by fear, greed and dishonesty about its real intentions (aided by Clinton’s own personal shortcomings), reduced him to a survivor, barely able to hold on to office in the face of a ferocious onslaught by the conservative think tanks, the media, and congressional Republicans. Obama knows perfectly well that the same forces intend a similar fate for his presidency and he is determined not to let that happen.
While he has not completely eliminated the power of the media to dominate the political mindscape, he has successfully developed a preemptive strategy that up to now has disrupted their attempts to construct a consistent, unfavorable myth that they can insinuate into the public unconsciousness through endless repetition. By promptly communicating his positions and their rationale to the public before the poison takes effect, he has repeatedly made his antagonists look like fools, knaves, or just sore losers.
I think this is good, not so much because I am enjoying watching the media’s discomfiture (which I am), or because I have an inflated opinion of Obama’s abilities (which are impressive in any case), but because Obama can now be judged by what he actually accomplishes, rather than by what the Republican leadership, the Fox network, and George Will would like us to believe that he has accomplished.
And that is an accomplishment worth applauding.
No one who has studied the Obama campaign has failed to be impressed with his strategic focus, that is, his ability and willingness to sacrifice immediate gains in the interest of ultimate victory. Long before the primaries, Obama had determined what was and was not essential to winning the Democratic nomination and general election, and, although he was quick to change tactics that were not working, his strategic plan to obtain a majority of convention delegates and then electoral votes remained relatively constant.
So when Obama makes himself accessible to the media to the extent that he has done, one can be fairly certain that such openness is not necessarily an exercise in ego-gratification, but the result of cold, hard calculations about what he must do to govern.
For reasons not immediately relevant to this discussion, George Bush speaks execrably in public, his speech consisting of little more than sentence fragments, malapropisms, oxymorons and grammatical train-wrecks that would have made Will Rogers blush. Yet it is universally conceded that this limitation did not hinder him in 2000 or 2004, when he came so close to winning both elections over far more able opponents, that—with a little help from his father’s appointees at the U. S. Supreme Court in 2000 and Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell in 2004—he became president both times. Not only did he become president, he was able to effectively push his right-wing political and economic agendas through Congress with little need to appeal personally to the public.
Bush could do this because he had a distinct advantage over Obama: the corporate media is inherently conservative. It goes without saying that, since its founding, the Fox empire has functioned as an arm of the Republican Party. The other networks, however, all of them either megacorporations or subsidiaries of megacorporations, have remained strongly biased toward right-wing, conservative positions on almost all the major public issues. NBC, for example, is owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor. ABC is a subsidiary of Disney, and CBS is the result of a merger with Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which at the time of the merger was a major defense contractor. The majority of “experts” who regularly appear on the networks are right-wing, or, at best, middle of the road, which in today’s context means Republican lite. In such an environment, progressive alternatives to the corporatist agenda never make it to the public.
The media, in other words, did much of Bush’s speaking for him. During Clinton’s presidency, the media, under the guise of objective reporting, served mainly as an echo chamber for the Republican Party and relayed uncritically their attacks on Clinton at every opportunity. Given this history, we can reasonably expect that Obama will get virtually no help from the same media that gave Bush a pass at every turn. They will seize upon even the slightest slip-ups by Obama and his family, and if the inevitable mistakes fail to appear, they will be fabricated as the needs arise, like the recent “outrage” over Mrs. Obama’s improperly touching the queen of England.
Obama’s response to this state of affairs has been to seize and wield the bully pulpit more effectively than any president since Jack Kennedy. Having observed that silence in the face of innuendoes, half-truths, and outright lies is fatal to a progressive politician, that the truth may or may not ultimately out by itself, and that it is political suicide to depend upon the media as a disinterested provider of timely and accurate information to the public, he has, at least up to now, preempted his opponents’ place in the national conversation and is using it to advance a mostly progressive agenda.
The media, accustomed to defining and guiding the national agenda by creating narratives that explain to the public why things are the way they are, has been at least temporally thwarted in exercising its usual role. The power to tell a story that runs around in everyone’s mind—George Lakoff calls it “framing”—is an awesome power, almost godlike. The media made Bush president twice by creating stories about his opponents that they were unable or unwilling to overcome with stories of their own. In both cases, the media stories were mixtures of truth and falsehood that contained just enough of the former to keep them from being rejected outright, and enough of the latter to make people feel uneasy voting for their targets.
In the case of Al Gore, the media story was that Gore was untruthful and boring. He was reported to have claimed that he invented the Internet, and that the novel, Love Story, was written about him and his wife, Tipper.
John Kerry, a recipient of three purple hearts during the Vietnam War, was subjected to a series of scurrilous lies by a group of veterans known as the “Swiftboaters,” who claimed that he did not deserve the medals he received.
Neither Gore nor Kerry successfully overcame the unfavorable and mostly untruthful media narratives that their Republican opponents threw against them.
My disappointment with the Clinton administration is well-documented in the pages of this web site, but his presidency was a failure in many respects because the Republicans and their allies in the media were able to push their own story into the minds of the public—creating a reality that was at odds with the truth—without serious opposition. Bill Clinton came into office with good intentions and high hopes, but a conservative tidal wave, nurtured by fear, greed and dishonesty about its real intentions (aided by Clinton’s own personal shortcomings), reduced him to a survivor, barely able to hold on to office in the face of a ferocious onslaught by the conservative think tanks, the media, and congressional Republicans. Obama knows perfectly well that the same forces intend a similar fate for his presidency and he is determined not to let that happen.
While he has not completely eliminated the power of the media to dominate the political mindscape, he has successfully developed a preemptive strategy that up to now has disrupted their attempts to construct a consistent, unfavorable myth that they can insinuate into the public unconsciousness through endless repetition. By promptly communicating his positions and their rationale to the public before the poison takes effect, he has repeatedly made his antagonists look like fools, knaves, or just sore losers.
I think this is good, not so much because I am enjoying watching the media’s discomfiture (which I am), or because I have an inflated opinion of Obama’s abilities (which are impressive in any case), but because Obama can now be judged by what he actually accomplishes, rather than by what the Republican leadership, the Fox network, and George Will would like us to believe that he has accomplished.
And that is an accomplishment worth applauding.
Rove to Speak at Mississippi College
Mar 21, 2009 09:01 Filed in: Bush
Administration
| A couple of weeks ago I was floored to receive
an invitation to hear Karl Rove speak at a $125 per
plate scholarship banquet benefitting Mississippi
College. That an institution calling itself
“of higher learning” would choose to be
associated with a scoundrel who deserves, not
praise, but a lengthy prison sentence, is
overwhelming and deeply disheartening. Is there an
ample supply of idiots in this state willing to pay
$125 to eat rubber chicken and consume the bile,
venom and half-truths that will almost certainly be
served up along with the dessert?
Rove is shortly to testify before Congress, under oath, about the firing of U.S. Attorneys insufficiently enthusiastic about bringing frivolous criminal actions against Democrats just before critical elections. Unfortunately, the hearings will be closed, so the public will not be able to see him squirm and attempt to evade questions, the answers to which we all are entitled to know. Hopefully, transcripts of the hearing will be made available. Reactionary genius Fred Sullens, editor of the now defunct Jackson Daily News, hated Theodore G. Bilbo, governor and senator, with an intensity matched only by his hatred of Governor Paul Johnson, Sr. Once, when he learned that Bilbo was to deliver a speech in Oxford, he wrote, and the date is illustrative only, “ On May 5, 1943 at 10:00 o’clock A.M., in Oxford, Mississippi, a vulture will puke.” Seems appropriate now. |
 |
Assessing Obama and Other Thoughts
From the first time I heard Obama at the 2004
Democratic convention, I felt that his speeches have
lacked a certain substance, a certain gritty edge, a
certain rhetorical gesture, that I would have liked to
hear. There was a blandness that caused my eyes to
glaze over. A real sociopath would have spoken a lot
better.
That hasn’t changed.
It probably has something to do with a lack of originality and a failure to leaven his advisory loaf with some truly creative and radical yeast. In the field of economics--a field so corrupted with the largesse of plutocrats, corporations, and wealthy right-wing cranks--the absence of a few brave, if not foolhardy, souls to question the given wisdom can make it difficult for a policy maker to envision practical and necessary—but unorthodox—solutions.
Given the economic advisors that Obama has gathered around him, I suspect that he is overawed by Ivy League intellectualism, even though he ought to be able to see through it, having spent three years at Harvard Law School. He is a very bright and decent but conventional thinker, however, and unless he is violently pushed in a different direction by the unfolding of events, he will follow the conventional wisdom. It is entirely possible that, like Roosevelt, he will ultimately find himself being pushed. Let us hope that we will have not already sunk too far into the abyss by then.
I have been thinking about Bernard Lietaer quite a bit lately. I've also been thinking about banking (who hasn’t?), and have concluded that by increasing banking reserve requirements to 100% and nationalizing the Federal Reserve System, which would prevent banks from creating money, we would solve 50% of our Wall Street banking problems. If we severely restricted margin purchases, options, and derivatives, and raised the top marginal income tax rate back to 90%, we would solve another 40%. Increasing the Federal Estate Tax and eliminating the step-up basis would take care of another 5%. Imposing a Tobin Tax on all monetary transfers would also be a good measure, as well as a 10-year holding period for an investment to be taxed as a capital gain and an end to the investment tax credit. That would take us well over 100%.
Alternative or complementary currencies, recommended by Lietaer, could be a huge benefit in many instances. I like the idea of eldercare credits. Also, a community mutual credit system could strengthen local connections between people and local businesses. It could also help the community survive bad times when people have less official cash. Alternative or complementary currencies have profound political implications, however, as they circumvent the government's monopoly (currently delegated to the banking system) on creating money and levying taxes. They will therefore provoke opposition from the banks and the government. Pity. We could use the resilience they provide for our fiat currency system.
That hasn’t changed.
It probably has something to do with a lack of originality and a failure to leaven his advisory loaf with some truly creative and radical yeast. In the field of economics--a field so corrupted with the largesse of plutocrats, corporations, and wealthy right-wing cranks--the absence of a few brave, if not foolhardy, souls to question the given wisdom can make it difficult for a policy maker to envision practical and necessary—but unorthodox—solutions.
Given the economic advisors that Obama has gathered around him, I suspect that he is overawed by Ivy League intellectualism, even though he ought to be able to see through it, having spent three years at Harvard Law School. He is a very bright and decent but conventional thinker, however, and unless he is violently pushed in a different direction by the unfolding of events, he will follow the conventional wisdom. It is entirely possible that, like Roosevelt, he will ultimately find himself being pushed. Let us hope that we will have not already sunk too far into the abyss by then.
I have been thinking about Bernard Lietaer quite a bit lately. I've also been thinking about banking (who hasn’t?), and have concluded that by increasing banking reserve requirements to 100% and nationalizing the Federal Reserve System, which would prevent banks from creating money, we would solve 50% of our Wall Street banking problems. If we severely restricted margin purchases, options, and derivatives, and raised the top marginal income tax rate back to 90%, we would solve another 40%. Increasing the Federal Estate Tax and eliminating the step-up basis would take care of another 5%. Imposing a Tobin Tax on all monetary transfers would also be a good measure, as well as a 10-year holding period for an investment to be taxed as a capital gain and an end to the investment tax credit. That would take us well over 100%.
Alternative or complementary currencies, recommended by Lietaer, could be a huge benefit in many instances. I like the idea of eldercare credits. Also, a community mutual credit system could strengthen local connections between people and local businesses. It could also help the community survive bad times when people have less official cash. Alternative or complementary currencies have profound political implications, however, as they circumvent the government's monopoly (currently delegated to the banking system) on creating money and levying taxes. They will therefore provoke opposition from the banks and the government. Pity. We could use the resilience they provide for our fiat currency system.
Why Geithner, Summers and the Rest Must Go
Mar 19, 2009 15:49 Filed in: Economics
I was perturbed when Obama unveiled his economic team
because it was made up mostly of recycled Clintonistas.
Most of them had a history of working in the
high-flying financial firms of Wall Street, and several
had a hand in setting the stage for the current
meltdown. Robert Rubin, treasury secretary under
Clinton, was the person most responsible for the repeal
of the Glass-Steagall Act, probably the single most
idiotic, misguided, and cynical act of the eight
Clinton years.
Incidentally, Rubin was handsomely rewarded by Citicorp when he resigned from the government a few months later.
It is becoming increasingly clear that these officials have not the slightest interest in restructuring our ailing financial system. Indeed, why would they be eager to change a system that has rewarded them as well as they have been rewarded? Hank Paulson (former treasury secretary) and Robert Rubin grew wealthy at Goldman Sachs, for whose welfare they have been particularly solicitous.
They want to put things back the way they were--to put Humpty Dumpty back on the wall, as it were.
Humpty Dumpty, however, isn’t going to be put back together. Wall Street, having conclusively demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that it is incapable of self-regulation, has completely lost the confidence of the public. Corruption matters. Conflicts of interest are inherently corrupt, and ignoring them leads to disaster. Excessive power and wealth corrupt. That is the lesson that has to be relearned every three of four generations.
Obama, if he is to accomplish a true turnaround, will have to clean house. The entire crowd of former Wall Street financiers and bankers will have to go, to be replaced with economists, financiers and bankers not beholden to the former power-brokers. The current financial czars have far too many conflicts of interest. It is only a matter of time before Obama must find solutions beyond throwing money at insolvent banks and insurance companies. As the debacle at AIG over bonuses clearly demonstrates, the present institutions and their kleptocratic managers are simply too corrupt to be allowed to continue business as usual. It is inconceivable in the current atmosphere that AIG would award bonuses for any reason, and the fact that they were awarded shows that they have no intention of changing their ways. Talk about a sense of entitlement!
I suspect that events will force Obama to clean house, and the sooner, the better. He is a quick study, and he is certainly aware that he has a severe problem with the economic advice he is getting.
Tom Lowe
An article by Steve Clemons prompted this post: Alexander Hamilton's Scorn: Reflecting on AIG, Goldman, Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin
Incidentally, Rubin was handsomely rewarded by Citicorp when he resigned from the government a few months later.
It is becoming increasingly clear that these officials have not the slightest interest in restructuring our ailing financial system. Indeed, why would they be eager to change a system that has rewarded them as well as they have been rewarded? Hank Paulson (former treasury secretary) and Robert Rubin grew wealthy at Goldman Sachs, for whose welfare they have been particularly solicitous.
They want to put things back the way they were--to put Humpty Dumpty back on the wall, as it were.
Humpty Dumpty, however, isn’t going to be put back together. Wall Street, having conclusively demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that it is incapable of self-regulation, has completely lost the confidence of the public. Corruption matters. Conflicts of interest are inherently corrupt, and ignoring them leads to disaster. Excessive power and wealth corrupt. That is the lesson that has to be relearned every three of four generations.
Obama, if he is to accomplish a true turnaround, will have to clean house. The entire crowd of former Wall Street financiers and bankers will have to go, to be replaced with economists, financiers and bankers not beholden to the former power-brokers. The current financial czars have far too many conflicts of interest. It is only a matter of time before Obama must find solutions beyond throwing money at insolvent banks and insurance companies. As the debacle at AIG over bonuses clearly demonstrates, the present institutions and their kleptocratic managers are simply too corrupt to be allowed to continue business as usual. It is inconceivable in the current atmosphere that AIG would award bonuses for any reason, and the fact that they were awarded shows that they have no intention of changing their ways. Talk about a sense of entitlement!
I suspect that events will force Obama to clean house, and the sooner, the better. He is a quick study, and he is certainly aware that he has a severe problem with the economic advice he is getting.
Tom Lowe
An article by Steve Clemons prompted this post: Alexander Hamilton's Scorn: Reflecting on AIG, Goldman, Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin
Frank Schaeffer Speaks
Mar 19, 2009 15:13 Filed in: Republican_Party
Via the Mahablog, Frank Schaeffer,
son of the late fundamentalist preacher Francis
Schaeffer, explains why he supported Obama. It is
scorching.
Need versus Demand
It is during economic recessions that the difference
between need and demand becomes obvious. Demand not
only means that people want something but that they
have the means and are willing to pay for what they
want. The market doesn’t give a fig about need;
it is interested only in demand.
During recessions, there is far more need than demand. Not just folks with the gimmes, but people who are destitute or in danger of becoming destitute. The market, however, in its solemn majesty, can allow people to starve or freeze to death without a thought, because without money they simply do not exist from an economic standpoint.
During recessions, there is far more need than demand. Not just folks with the gimmes, but people who are destitute or in danger of becoming destitute. The market, however, in its solemn majesty, can allow people to starve or freeze to death without a thought, because without money they simply do not exist from an economic standpoint.
The CDC Starts Recovering
Mar 15, 2009 09:27 Filed in: Bush
Administration Subjects Health
I ran into Sam (not his real name) the other day who
was in town on personal business. He has worked for the
CDC
as long as I can remember, and he was unusually
chipper when we met.
According to Sam, things started improving at the CDC on January 20, 2009, and have been getting better ever since, as more and more political/religious hacks depart the agency to crawl back under whatever rocks they came from when they were first appointed by the Bush administration.
“For the past eight years,” Sam said, “management would give us their policy decision and tell us to get the science to support it. Now they are once again asking us to get the science so they can use it as a basis for a rational decision.”
Since the CDC is charged with assessing health threats, including the likelihood of epidemics, politicization is a serious matter. It is good to know that the agency is back in responsible hands.
According to Sam, things started improving at the CDC on January 20, 2009, and have been getting better ever since, as more and more political/religious hacks depart the agency to crawl back under whatever rocks they came from when they were first appointed by the Bush administration.
“For the past eight years,” Sam said, “management would give us their policy decision and tell us to get the science to support it. Now they are once again asking us to get the science so they can use it as a basis for a rational decision.”
Since the CDC is charged with assessing health threats, including the likelihood of epidemics, politicization is a serious matter. It is good to know that the agency is back in responsible hands.
Give it Back
The New York Times reports today that a number of
banks, from smaller ones to some of the biggest
(Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo), find the conditions
for receiving taxpayer bailout cash so onerous that
they are talking about returning the money to the
federal government.
Some Banks, Feeling Chained, Want to Return Bailout Money
If the banks can afford to return the money, it is rather obvious that they never needed it and their CEOs and CFOs were lying when they told Congress that they were about to go under without massive infusions of fresh capital. Something smells unbelievably rotten about what is happening on Wall Street and we need to get to the bottom of it quickly. It’s looking more and more like a shell game designed to benefit the people at the top of the financial sector at the expense of just about everyone else.
Throughout this extraordinary economic episode that began last September, Wall Street (and its mostly Republican allies in Congress) have protested violently at any government effort to help poor and middle-class families that are losing their jobs and their homes. They are choking on the requirement that if they accept public monies they must actually do something in return for the public whose taxes make it possible for the bailouts to happen.
The government should immediately accept--even demand--a refund of the bailout money and begin investigating the banks for fraud, perjury, and perhaps even worse criminal offenses. Thorough audits by independent auditors of all the bailout recipients should be the first order of the day. The FDIC already has the authority to audit and then take over an insolvent bank. The president should instruct them to do so, no matter how large a bank may be.
Some Banks, Feeling Chained, Want to Return Bailout Money
If the banks can afford to return the money, it is rather obvious that they never needed it and their CEOs and CFOs were lying when they told Congress that they were about to go under without massive infusions of fresh capital. Something smells unbelievably rotten about what is happening on Wall Street and we need to get to the bottom of it quickly. It’s looking more and more like a shell game designed to benefit the people at the top of the financial sector at the expense of just about everyone else.
Throughout this extraordinary economic episode that began last September, Wall Street (and its mostly Republican allies in Congress) have protested violently at any government effort to help poor and middle-class families that are losing their jobs and their homes. They are choking on the requirement that if they accept public monies they must actually do something in return for the public whose taxes make it possible for the bailouts to happen.
The government should immediately accept--even demand--a refund of the bailout money and begin investigating the banks for fraud, perjury, and perhaps even worse criminal offenses. Thorough audits by independent auditors of all the bailout recipients should be the first order of the day. The FDIC already has the authority to audit and then take over an insolvent bank. The president should instruct them to do so, no matter how large a bank may be.