California Greening

Teachers' Woes Grow Ever More Intensely

2012-01-31T13:57:00.000-08:00

Recent actions at the state levels have drawn attention to the role of teachers’ unions in the public education process. It should be said that most of this attention is unwarranted. The fact is that, in the context of education cuts, more demands are being made on teachers than they are able to deliver in the current public school setting. This has nothing to do with teachers' unions.

Regular education is facing the consequences of increased class sizes and pressures resulting from NCLB and state budget cuts. One consequence of this is the increasing turnover of teachers and the rising median age of teachers. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/03/08/high-teacher-turnover-rates-are-a-big-problem-for-americas-public-schools/ http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/SASS/tables/state_2004_19.asp Young people are more likely to avoid the profound difficulties of the current public school work environment in favor of other careers. It is worth saying that public school teachers have heard the message of the public - parents, public officials and public opinion. Teachers have always considered themselves as advocates for their students. But for the past 20 years this has turned into a situation where teachers are being scapegoated for the poor status of student academic performance.

The profound demographic changes in the nation have added basic language skills to the array of issues that impact on student performance. The ELL training is not proving sufficient in expanding the skills needed by non-English speaking students and ELL classes are inadequately constructed in numerous settings to address the issues of improving student achievement. “If mainstream teachers are to help meet the many challenges inherent in educating ELLs, one of many subgroups within a single classroom, a researched-based effective professional development source must be devised to create the workforce with the skills needed to teach these students effectively. Equity of education for ELL students will depend ultimately upon how schools respond to the individual student and his or her needs. The training, follow-through, and support of the mainstream teachers for English language learners are important to all Americans, as education is the pathway to employability, economic independence, and social wellbeing.” http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1709&context=gradschool_diss

Increasing teacher training will not benefit if new potential teachers see that the environment they are considering is so profoundly dysfunctional. Expectations on current teachers have been raised beyond the capabilities to achieve. This is resulting in teacher turnovers and cheating scandals such as the one in Atlanta.

Learning technologies are often pointed to as the silver bullet in public education. The fact is that these technologies have their own issues that include the difficulty in monitoring and the lack of personal interactions and dialogue between students and teachers. On-line schools and other alternatives have arisen and gained a certain popularity. http://www.kvue.com/news/Online-K-12-schooling-on-the-rise-138317819.html It is not reasonable to presume that it will ever replace the public education system.

Increasing common core standards holds no solutions when they are not sufficiently relevant in the existing classroom settings. Standards in California have been raised in the face of repeated failures throughout the state public school system. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2011/11/many_california_elementary_stu.html One thing we are learning from the NCLB testing is how inadequate student performance is in meeting those standards. In this context, there is an increasing atmosphere of antagonism between teachers, parents and administration, not collaboration. Teacher demoralization is an issue in itself that will not be addressed simply by core standards. Training will help. There appears to be more training being expected of public school teachers than is being delivered by either public schools or higher education. Focusing solely on teacher training will not address the profound demands that are being made on teachers in the classroom.

A clear article on the Peripheral Canal.

2012-01-28T20:44:00.000-08:00

One of the things that California Greens need to think about is the long term effects of the decisions and planning for a new "conveyance" for water through, under or around the Sacramento - San Joaquin Delta. It was once called the Peripheral Canal and voters defeated it the last time Jerry Brown was Governor.
If you want to understand what is happen, you know, the basic questions like:

Who benefits?
How much will it cost?
Who pays for it?

there is no better place to start that with Deanna Lynn Wulff's article in the Bilingual Weekly out of Stockton. This quote tells you why it is important.

Nearly two-thirds of California residents and the majority of agriculture get their water from the Delta and its tributaries, which surround Stockton in an intricate pattern of levees, rivers and farms. But the Delta faces multifaceted environmental problems, which have led to a crisis for fisheries, wildlife and water quality.

The second place to look for information about cost / benefit is from Fresno friend, Lloyd G. Carter. His comments about the lack of any cost / benefit analysis regarding the State Water Project makes it sound like we are just replaying an old newsreel.

But, of course, Pat Brown and southerners in the Legislature ignored Ballis’s call for a cost-benefit analysis of the State Water Project and the problem has been beset by financial problems ever since, delivering half the water promised and costing twice as much as advertised, with many billions of dollars more need to actually finish it

. Greens need to be engaged in dealing with such major issues. It is what political parties do if they are relevant.

How much regulation is enough?

2012-01-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

It was clear from Obama's SOTU last night that governmental regulation is going to be a major issue in the 2012 presidential campaign. The Republican mantra of less regulation, especially environmental regulation, will flow easily from nearly every Republican Candidate and you even heard Obama cite a Republican President, Lincoln, to the effect that "That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more."

With that background, we need to be look at the economic impact of some problems that we try to resolve through regulation. That this for an example:

IMPACT ON ECONOMY OVER 5 YEARS
Study: Citrus Greening Cost State $3.6 Billion, 6,600 Jobs

http://www.theledger.com/article/20120124/NEWS/120129665?Title=Study-Citrus-Greening-Cost-State-3-6-Billion-6-600-Jobs

some info from the article:
Citrus Greening (called Huanglongbing in it's contry of origin, China) has now been confirmed in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas and most citrus-producing regions of Mexico. It was discovered in Florida in Sept 2005. At the Second International Research Conference on Huanglongbing in January 2011, researchers estimated greening had already infected about 18 percent of Florida's citrus trees, estimated at 70.6 million trees last year. Some say as much as 25% are infected. Thousands of acres of citrus are no longer producing saleable fruit and are now abandoned, with the psyllids continuing to spread the disease to nearby orchards.
A UF study says that since the citrus seasons of 2006-07 through 2010-11, the disease has cost the state's economy $3.6 billion over five years, including 6,611 lost jobs in agriculture and related industries.

If this were anything else that you morning orange juice, I am sure that we would have heard about it through the morning news. In stead, we get a guessing game over the medical condition of Demi Moore. However, you don't hear about this type of work, and it goes on every day. But it is easy to find attacks on the Endangered Species Act or restraints of free trade.

Greens need to have a clear definition of the role of government regulation. Maybe Lincoln's thinking is a good starting point. We also need to clearly articulate how we can do this with community based economic development, because it soon become apparent that what is good for one community may not be good for it's neighbor. Lacking such an understanding, we will easily fall victim to the massive, industry financed publicity campaigns, not only as politicla voices, but as voters and consumers.

New directions in water policy, or just shirking responsibilities.

2012-01-20T08:45:00.000-08:00

It is rare that I will use this blog to call attention to another blog, but today's post at On the Public Record illustrates the depth of the problem that Greens would have with a rational regional water management policy.

I’ve wondered about the State and Fed’s role diminishing, especially as the legislature and the agencies explicitly set their water management approach as ‘supporting integrated regional water management’. I worry about that some, since I believe that local governments generally don’t have the luxury to do anything more than work in their immediate self-interest and compete with their neighbors for “growth” and its accompanying new tax revenue, which will always require additional water sources. (emphasis mine)

However, regional, watershed based management the only way to ensure that Green Values will govern the development and use of this indispensable resource. My observation of the politics of water in California is that it will always be governed by urban growth. At time, urban needs are hidden in the demand to support CA's agribusinesses, but too often the subsidized agricultural water allocation is only resold to urban users at a bigger profit than can be made from using that water for growing food. If you care about water and politics in this semi-arid state, then On the Public Record is required reading. In this case, his concern is very real and probably even understated.

Kids Going 120 Miles to School

2012-01-19T16:50:00.000-08:00

Do "minority kids" do poorly in school because "those people" don't have a high enough regard for education? You know you've heard variations of this argument about a 1,000 times. The L.A. Times published a story that I personally found poignant on a number of levels.

The Los Angeles Times, Thursday, January 19, 2012
Death Valley Students Face
Loss of Lifeline
By Teresa Watanabe

A school bus carries students from Death Valley High School in Shoshone to a Native American village in the national park. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times / January 10, 2012)

California has pulled funding for school transportation for the rest of this fiscal year and may eliminate it entirely next year. In Death Valley, where some students have a two-hour round trip, the cut is 'catastrophic.' ... It is 6:54 a.m. Marlee, a 14-year-old with raven hair and red nail polish, climbs aboard. She is one of nine students who spend more than two hours riding this bus 120 miles every school day to and from the Furnace Creek area to their school in Shoshone...

The long distance and light passenger load make this bus ride exorbitantly expensive. The Death Valley Unified School District spends about $3,500 a year for each of its 60 students on home-to-school transportation — compared with about $26 per student in more densely populated districts, according to data compiled by the California School Boards Assn.

So when Gov. Jerry Brown announced that lagging state revenue would require eliminating all school transportation funding for the rest of this fiscal year, it hit this tiny school district harder than just about any other in California. Death Valley Supt. Jim Copeland calls the cut, which took effect Jan. 1, "catastrophic."

For students like Marlee, the issue goes way beyond dollars and cents. The bus is her lifeline from the desolation of the desert to a wider world of teachers and friends, school sports and art projects and academic stimulation.

"School is the highlight of my life, and we can't get to school without the buses," Marlee said after a recent morning ride.

Educators statewide have decried the busing cuts as particularly unfair to small and rural districts that shoulder disproportionately high transportation costs. They are scrambling to reverse the move with legal action, letter-writing campaigns and legislative lobbying. Some are arguing that if cuts have to be made, they should be distributed equitably across the state ...

Of course, Governor Brown, like all the Democrats and Republicans in California, is playing games. The object of his game is to convince California voters to approve his retro tax plan. Meanwhile, he talks big about "investing" in big ticket projects for California's future [Translation: shoving a lot of money into programs favored by particular interests joined at the hip to the Democratic Party Machines].

There is no lack of criticism of California's once great system of public education. The problem is that most criticism comes from the so-called "conservative" side of the aisle. While everybody is busy obsessing over Barack Obama Democrats versus the barbaric Republicans we are in for another rough ride in 2012 at the state and local level in California.

Ecology of the Gardens of Democracy

2012-01-05T20:22:00.000-08:00

While eating a late lunch yesterday, I turned on the Dylan Ratigan show on MSNBC. Luckily I caught his interview with Nick Hanauer, author (along with Eric Liu) of a new book entitled Gardens of Democracy. I embed the clip below because I want you to hear how he argues for considering that the economy is truly an ecosystem or rather what that means.

;Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This makes a lot of sense to me. For the most part, the Green Party has not been very adept at clarifying just what economic policies we want to put in place. This election cycle, with the lack of jobs being high on every candidate's list of talking points, it will be imperative that we find our economic voice. This just might be part of the story.

Poll: Indy Californians Still Support Climate Action | KQED's Climate Watch

2011-12-21T22:01:00.000-08:00

Over the past decade, I have not been a staunch supporter of the League of Conservation Voters. This is strictly because they operate as the environmental caucus of the Democratic Party. However, I do have to thank them for conducting this poll, as reported by San Francisco's KQED's Climate Watch.

Poll: Indy Californians Still Support Climate Action | KQED's Climate Watch

Another finding was that a substantial majority (69%) agreed that “environmental regulations provide an important benefit to our society,” while 21% agreed with a statement that they do more harm than good. The approach of the survey was to offer two opposing statements on each matter and ask which one “comes closest to your own view.” These two environmental questions did not offer degrees of agreement, as did some others in the poll.

Over the past several years, there has been a steady stream of invective from the Republican Party proclaiming that the economy would recover by itself if we just got government out of the way, reduced all of those "unnecessary regulations" and gave industry it's way. Of course, you heat that again and again from those extractive industries: coal, oil, natural gas, mining. Yes, they do provide jobs now, but they also are rushing us like a runaway train into economic ruin.

Even though some in government seem to talk in agreement with this poll, the actions of many governments, especially the US, is out of step with the public perception. Grist's David Roberts wrote today about the "climate cognitive dissonance" between what science tells us is going to happen on our current path and the reaction of the markets to that information.

There is a major opportunity for Greens, especially those who have little faith in the markets to begin with, to actually use this for our own political ends. We should be calling attention to the fact that business as usual is taking on more risk that that which caused the dot-com bubble burst of the 1990's or the real estate mortgage melt down of the past 5 years. As Roberts points out:

Yet markets don't seem to be pricing those risks either! In fact, global markets don't seem to be taking climate change or climate policy seriously. Even if you don't care about that ecologically, it's alarming economically. It's a huge, unacknowledged, unhedged risk, and if we've learned anything in the past few years, it's that having huge, unacknowledged risks at the core of your economy is ill-advised.

This week, we watch in dismay, but not surprise, as the U. S. Congress fails once again to put aside politics and deal with issues of Medicare funding and tax fairness. If there was ever a time when we need issue oriented, future focused Greens in Congress, it is now.

The Road to the Future: California Water Management Reconfiguration

2011-11-29T14:32:00.000-08:00

The real politics in California has nothing to do with environmentalism. This is simply self-promotion by urban metropolises for increasing water supplies. The conflict is for the diversion of surface water supplies. This takes place while California's coastal cities continue to disregard
new supplies through desalination because of its costs. Rural regions have painted themselves in the corner through their depletion of groundwater supplies.

It is a classic urban vs. rural water war. Cities gave themselves a blank check for growth through diversions of surface water from rural regions. Now, every diversion sparks conflict. This has nothing to do with the environment, just users fighting for supplies of surface freshwater. It could be resolved simply by regional planning and sustainable prioritization of regional supplies by regional users. The longer the diversions are the focus of the conflict the more intense it
will become.

Two large sub-states should be mapped, with Los Angeles included in the southern sub-state. The secessionist map of the Central Valley separatists did not include Los Angeles. Clearly, this was a self-serving proposition. All supplies stay in the sub-states. Regions are established within the sub-states that are basin-based and anticipate imbalances within the sub-states in regards to supplies, but NO diversions can be authorized outside of each sub-state. Mull it over. California simply is unable to dodge desalination. It cannot continue to rob Peter to pay Paul. Regions need the capability of defining their own priorities in water use and resource development.

Rural regions are rapidly transforming with the growth of population. Their economic uses and residential uses are increasing coming up against the stone wall of restricted supplies. This proposed water management reconfiguration is the only one that will open the door to users and avoid economic and political catastrophe. Without new supplies, there will be only ghost towns and agricultural crises. Without increasing supplies of water, there is no way to avoid running out and the only question will be: "Who will take the fall?".

Nation of Consumers in Hard Times

2011-11-28T09:47:00.000-08:00

We have become a nation of consumers when once we were the manufacturing leader of the world. We now measure our economy by how much we buy rather than how much we make. Almost every media outlet this weekend underscored that fact with story after story about surge in consumer buying on Black Friday followed by estimates of our need top spend that will come today, Cyber Monday.

It seems that the 1980's bumper sticker is apropos: He who dies with the most toys wins.

It is against this backdrop of rampant consumerism and, inevitably, people behaving badly, that Scott Pelley showed us the other side on 60 Minutes last night. When consumerism rules the day, what happens to people when you can't consume, when you reduced to living in a car? We have given names to generations. The seems to be the Hard Times Generation.

Never has unemployment been so high for so long. And as a result, more than 16 million kids are living in poverty - the most since 1962

According to Pelley, this is pushing near to 25%. That is 25% who can not participate in the spending spree that fills our news and encourages Wall Street. That is 25% who should have learned something. As 15-year old Arielle Metzger told Pelley:

Every time I see like a teenager or any other kid fighting with their parents or arguing with them and like not doing what they're told it really hurts me. Because they could be in my shoes. And of course I don't want them to be in my shoes. But they need to learn to appreciate what they have and who they have in their life. Because it may be the last day they might have it.

In spite of the effort of OWS to call attention to this income disparity, to the rapacity of some of the super rich, we continue down this road to ruin. I am not sure what the Occupy movements will end up accomplishing. If they don't get more people on their side, it might not be much.

I know a lot of Greens support, or participate in various Occupy efforts. They are very clear about what they are against. Most seem unclear as to what they are for. Greens need to articulate the vision of where this country is going, what the future will be.

So, here is my challenge to you now: What is the future we want? Let's start a conversation here. There is a wider effort going on elsewhere:

That session is just getting underway at www.futurewewant.org, at facebook.com/futurewewant at @futurewewant on Twitter, and at the UN’s web site. http://www.un.org/en/sustainablefuture .

I plan to join in there. They need to have the Green Party vision of a sustainable future with all that means for people, resources, energy, etc. Clearly, it needs to be one not driven by consumerism. This is a conversation that all GP candidate should be having with the voters.
.

The EPA is under attack, but what about natural gas.

2011-11-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

I normally keep the tube on while washing dishes. It is mostly audio wallpaper. However, last night it was on MSNBC and when Rachel Maddow said that she was going to interview EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, I stopped working, poured a glass of a Paso Robles barbera and sat down to listen.

It was an intriguing opportunity for Jackson to score some points and she almost hit it out of the park, but missed an opportunity to deal with climate when discussing fracking and the use of un-natural gas.
I can't imagine a better setup to this piece that Maddow provided. She started with Nixon's establishment of the EPA and led that into the current Republican presidential candidate unbridled antipathy for even using the initials. This led her into the interview where she gave Jackson the opportunity to defend the EPA, which Jackson did very well. And that is where things diverged. Yes, Jackson wants to protect air and water from the excesses of fracking (after they get the science right)… right. But then she repeated the same things that we hear from all of the petro-industry commercials.

I think natural gas is important to our country. I do think that it is a potential big change for us. It has immediate benefits from a pollution side. It has immediate benefits from an energy security side, but what we have to be able to say to the people is that in the process of getting this natural gas, we're not going to screw up your groundwater or drinking water or your air.

This coming election cycle is going to feature a concerted attack on "regulation" by the Republicans and that pushes the EPA to the top echelon of issues. While we know that both Mesplay and Stein would be staunch protectors of the EPA, it is not yet clear which will be most able to articulate a narrative in which we can:

protect our water resources,
manage to control greenhouse gases,
provide useful employment for all our population.

That is a tough task, but it is what we have to do if Greens are going to make even a ripple in the national political pond.

Bio-Regionalism and Immigration

2011-11-18T14:45:00.000-08:00

As someone who has been engaged in public education and water planning there is a vital need for local Greens to propose bodies and committees that integrate immigrants into decision-making process to address their needs and concerns. I know California is lagging in providing real support systems for Spanish speaking students and this is wrapped around the issues of teacher training AND budget cuts. Further, the rapid rate of increasing student populations with specific needs and the impacts of growth on water quality and supply are responsibilities that can most effectively be addressed by those directly impacted. We begin to break down the kinds of antagonisms that have been allowed to fester for so long when we work together in our communities. People who are labeled as "anti-immigrant" are often responding to the failures of current systems to address the profound demographic changes and often are unable themselves to impact on local policies.

It is fine to support immigrants. But as things stand now too many in California are denied adequate education, often end up in jail and prison (or held in virtual bondage)and they cannot get the support they need for their communities' water systems, such as in the Central Valley cities. We are disregarding that "sanctuary" as it is currently implemented remains rested in proclamations. We need to define that "sanctuary" in reality means safety, security and opportunity for a new and brighter future. The public is aware and frustrated at the failures of public schools and water systems. Getting people to interact begins to break down the walls and establishes a common and shared vision for their communities that is not exclusive to any given group of people.

In NM the Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA) had a Stakeholder Advisory Committee until it was dissolved administratively. When it was functioning it enabled users and stakeholders to engage directly with the ABCWUA and provide input and present concerns of different groups as to what things they were dealing with regarding the resource. From there, it is up to a Green Party to provide the electoral and political leadership that begins to break down the walls as they exist today. The dismantling of the Advisory Committee demonstrates how those determined to preserve the status quo have no desire to open our governing entities. It also demonstrates the real role of a Green Party in building change. We need to promote candidates who present new opportunities and the campaigns should not just focus on the debates as they are constructed today by the duopoly parties. We can make real proposals in the structure of the governing entities of our communities that begin to break down the animosities as they may exist. Our neighbors are not our enemies; they are the source of new solutions and alternatives that will improve sustainability and improve the quality of life for all.

Occupy Pelosi's Office

2011-11-16T20:17:00.000-08:00

I would like to suggest that the Occupy Wall Street folks, especially the Occupy San Francisco demonstrators, seek to Occupy everything Pelosi.

If there is anything wrong with Congress, it is the idea that they are different from the rest of us. They love to give themselves special privileges. Nothing exemplifies this more than the manner in which Pelosi and her husband accepted an IPO stock deal with Visa and then Pelosi kept legislation for new regulation of the Credit Card industry bottled up, not allowing it to come to a vote in the House while she was Speaker. The current Speaker, John Boehner, is not better.

All you need to know came from Steve Kroft on 60 minutes this week, yet no one seems to pick this up. If it were Boehner, you know the crowd at MSNBC (O'Donnell, Maddow, Shultz) would be all over this were it a Republican Speaker, but Pelosi is the 2nd best fund raiser for the Democrats and that gives her a lot of power.

If Occupy San Francisco wants to be non-partisan, they should go after the powerful and that includes San Francisco's favorite Congresswoman. Maybe CA Greens need to nudge them a bit.

Immigration: is a policy of compassion possible?

2011-11-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I mentioned Laurence C. Smith's The World in 2050 and promised to connect his ideas to Green Party Policies. I still was not sure where this was going to take me and therefore, overly ambitious about the time frame. It will take a lot more than the two weeks I mentioned.

In the meantime, I did get an OpEd for my local paper out of it. It will be run on Friday Nov. 7 in the Morgan Hill Times, but you can read a copy at Polizeros.

There are two forces that will drive the movement of people in coming decade. One is obviously the mounting pressures from population growth. If one has to leave their homelands, then why not to a wealthier America? or a more welcoming Canada? The other is climate disruption where drought causes famine, where sea level rise floods coastal cities and delta farmlands and some places just become unbearable.

Estimates of the number of climate refugees vary widely. We know how many people live in affected areas... but it only a guess as to how many will chose to leave when not yet forced to do so. Some estimate it to be as high as 50 million.

Even if we don't agree to such a high number, still we have to admit that there will be some. Pacific Islands will be under water. Increased desertification already affects Africa, the Mediterranean, even Texas (sub's req'd). How many will be displaced by this? I don't know but the refugee camps in Kenya are already over full.

Along with this climate disruption, we will will have political disruption as well. There has always been a resentment against new immigrants in the US, even though this country is the product of a succession of immigrations. Now state after state, most recently Alabama, have passed laws claiming to protect the US from "illegal" immigration, but in reality with a strong racist motivation.

Then, as I was thinking on this issue, two news items game me the impetus to start writing. One is the release of a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that gives a very sobering assessment of climate risk. According to the UK's Guardian:

"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

That prettymuch tells us that we need changes in energy policy now. But we also need to understand how it will affect immigration here.

Before this week, I might has painted a bleak picture, one of the US demonstrating a fortress mentality closing all its borders with Herman Cain electric fences or moats filled with alligators. Then, a stunning thing happened. Arizona voters successfully recalled State Senator RusselPearce, President of the Senate and the author of Arizona's infamous immigration law, a law strongly opposed by Arizona's Green Party. Arizonans have had enough of militancy and racism. The election turned on the fact that Arizonans wanted their legislators to have a bit of compassion.

I expect that there will be more political dislocations. If the US accepts climate refugees, they will compete for existing jobs. The Democratic Party has always tried to make immigrant communities as part of their political base. But they also have leaned heavily on labor union support that will act to protect their jobs for existing membership. This will not sort out quickly.

What does this mean for Greens? Neither of our presidential candidates, Kent Mesplay and Jill Stein, seem to have paid much attention to this issue. If they were to do so, if they were to focus on building a national policy based on compassion, I am sure that they will find acceptance in the electorate.

Additional Information: Green Party Platform on Immigration / Migration.

A thought experiment … a tipping point.

2011-10-30T21:32:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street has grown into a what some call a larger movement. However, while groups in many cities share the same frustrations with the status quo … two stagnated parties, a country run by a too highly speculative financial services industry … I am not as confident as Michael Moore is that this movement will sustain itself.

I was wondering where it would end up. Then I thought of the words that Lewis Carrol gave to the Cheshire Cat.

In Alice in Wonderland, as Alice approaches the Cheshire Cat she sees a signpost with many arrows pointing in many different directions, down many roads. Alice asks the Cheshire Cat, "Which road should I take?" The Cheshire Cat replies, "Where do you want to go?" When Alice replies that she doesn't know, the Cheshire Cat concludes, "Then ANY road will do."

If Greens are ready to point the way to a better future, then we need to know what the world will be like. I have been reading a book entitled The World in 2050 by UCLA Geographer Laurence Smith. That seems to be a good base for considering what our policies need to be.

The year 2008 was one of fundamental change. In the US, it marked the first time that an African American was elected President. On the world level, a more meaningful, during 2008, the majority of the world's population was living in urban centers. Until then, a majority was living in rural areas.

Since then, the world's population has reached 7 billion. It only took 12 years to add that last billion people or the equivalent of adding the population of the United States every 4 years. By 2050, it will be 9 billion.

So we get the picture that the world will be very densely populated urban areas, with all that this means in terms of the needs to build infrastructure, housing, transportation and to use that transportation to move things into the cities: iron, steel, glass, cement, food, water... and then to move out our waste.

Add to this, the fact that our climate is going to change, perhaps very quickly. Already we are seeing an increased desertification in areas like Texas. Climate Progress blogger, Joe Romm has contributed an article for Nature that speaks to the Dust-Bowlification and the grave threat it poses for food security.

"Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced."

Over the next 2 weeks, I will take each of the factors that will define our world in 2050; population demographics, climate change, economic globalization and the scarcity of resources, and try to relate them to Green Party policies. For example, both population growth and climate change will have a major impact on immigration and any national politician needs to be be able to talk to this issue.

Bruce Dixon on Atlanta - Template for L.A. Critique?

2011-10-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: Bruce A. Dixon is a distinguished journalist living in Marietta GA, where he is a principal at a strategic telephony and consulting firm, and a state committee member of the Georgia Green Party. He wrote this after Atlanta's African-American Mayor Kasim Reed ordered a violent crackdown on Occupy Atlanta. I have cross-posted the entire commentary because, in my opinion, this is a beautiful example of the critique I would like to see published about California's own "Black Misleadership Class." Where I live in Los Angeles, the 3 city council members most hostile to Occupy LA are the 3 African-Americans: Herb Wesson, my Councilman Bernard C. Parks, and mayoral candidate Jan Perry. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of L.A.'s race-obsessed presumed to be "progressive" intelligentsia has either been indifferent, lukewarm, or hostile to Occupy LA. Too many progressives cling to sentimental feelings about Democratic Party Hacks in communities of color -- bamboozled by 40-year-old myths that simply "Being Black" confers a special high-minded moral sensitivity for "the poorest of the poor" and "the most vulnerable" ... blah, blah, blah.

Do you think this is too harsh? Post a comment. I am sorry to report that we have no consensus among L.A. Greens about our relationship with Occupy LA and the "Black Misleadership Class." Nevertheless, I am determined to write a statement on this and I need your input.

Posted on The Black Commentator, October 26, 2011
Occupy Atlanta VS Kasim Reed,
the Black Misleadership Class and the One Percent
By Bruce A. Dixon

Back in January 2010, I wrote that

"...the black political elite no longer believes its mission is to fight for peace and justice. The newer, more cynical black elite are unmoored from their peace-and-justice-loving base. They are focused on their own careers, and the corporate largesse that makes those careers possible... the black politics of a previous generation, in which black candidates and public officials were expected to stand for something beside their own careers, is over..."

I pointed to Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed as poster boy for this new and cynical generation of the black misleadership class.

On Saturday afternoon, Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed screamed, shouted and threatened representatives of Occupy Atlanta, declaring that those who wanted to be arrested "would get their wish." After a mobilization of several hundred additional protesters, some barricades and a threatening display of police numbers, City Hall decided not to clear Woodruff Park that night. The mayor declared he would send a delegation of preachers to talk to occupiers, but that this would be their "last chance."

By Monday, the mayor regained his composure, and called an afternoon press conference in which he declared that Occupy Atlanta was an imminent danger to public health and safety, because of a single gas-fueled electric generator. In the park. Never mind, Occupy Atlanta's Tim Franzen pointed out, that Atlanta tailgaters at college and NFL football games deploy dozens of these in parking lots every weekend.

Atlanta police massed around the occupiers again Sunday and Monday nights, amid renewed mayoral threats, but took no further action. TV viewers were treated to the spectacle of former mayor Andrew Young advising occupiers to settle on one or two good demands and leave the park. When a couple of the mayor's preachers, who claimed they were not acting on behalf of the mayor finally showed up on Tuesday, they demanded an immediate meeting with five to seven leaders of the occupation, and one or two demands they could take back to City Hall. Spokespeople for the occupiers, who included State Senator Vincent Fort, Ron Allen, Tim Franzen, Joe Beasley and a handful of others told them the earliest meeting date that could be arranged would be Thursday, and expressed serious doubt that the mayor was able or willing to address their demands. The Thursday meeting was agreed upon, and the preachers departed.

But late Tuesday night, in a display of contempt for the occupiers and his own preachers, Mayor Kasim Reed ordered Woodruff Park surrounded by hundreds of police, who cleared the park shortly after midnight, arresting more than 50.

Atlanta's Black Mayors, The Black Misleadership Class and the One Percent

Nobody should doubt that Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed is firmly in the pocket of the one percent. It's old news. It's a choice he and leaders of the local black misleadership class made more than a generation ago. The clique of black political leaders who came to power with Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson in 1973, and who still hold sway today have never been friends or advocates of black or white working people. Though they owed, and still owe their offices, careers and personal fortunes to the political victories won by the Freedom Movement, Atlanta's black misleadership class has rarely if ever lined up with black and working people when it came to economic justice.

Mayor Maynard Jackson in 1977 defined the relationship between the class of newly privileged black politicians and the rest of black Atlanta by deliberately provoking and then savagely breaking a strike by Atlanta sanitation workers seeking decent pay and medical benefits. Georgia's white business leaders began to understand that though the color of the city's politicians had changed, little else would. And it hasn't. By the end of the 70s, the Maynard Jackson administration boasted of leaveraging city contracts and the construction of the nation's largest airport to create two or three dozen new black millionaires, from whom wealth was to trickle down to the entire African American community. The only thing that really trickled down to black Atlanta and black communities nationwide was the self-celebrating myth of Black Mecca, where the climate was benign, the housing affordable, the jobs plentiful and the politicians enlightened. It was a myth, but a potent one.

Maynard Jackson was succeeded by Andy Young, a former confidante of Martin Luther King. Young's signature project was bringing the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta, providing the excuse to clear vast tracts in the city of poor people and abandoned industries, and replace them with richer people and more shopping. Jackson returned for a last term after Young, and was followed by Bill Campbell, who sold the city's water network to a private firm. Young cashed in his chips as a civil rights icon to found GoodWorks International, a PR and consulting firm for multinational corporations like Wal-Mart and Nike, and serve on the boards of corporations like Barrick Gold, which is heavily implicated in plunder and genocide in the Congo.

Shirley Franklin came in after Campbell with a campaign of sweeping privatizations of parks, city services, parking and more. But with Atlanta's newly privatized water works pumping rust colored mud through the taps of tens of thousands of Atlanta residents (including wealthy white ones) the drive to privatize everything in sight had to be slowed, though Franklin was able to complete demolition of nearly all Atlanta's public housing, driving tens of thousands of poor black Atlantans from the city. Like Andy Young, Franklin also cashed in after leaving Atlanta's City Hall, as a consultant for the telecom industry, and championing the privatization of schools and services of all kinds.

By 2002, after a generation of “Black Mecca” and black political leadership, the city's poverty rate was in the top five of metro areas nationwide. One in three black Atlanta children is in poverty, even with the expulsion of tens of thousands of poor Atlantans as their neighborhoods have been demolished.

The current mayor is firmly within the tradition of his predecessors. Kasim Reed is a corporate lawyer for the rich and racist, a man who has never fought for or believed in justice for ordinary people. As a state senator in 2006 he introduced vicious anti-immigrant legislation that paralleled similar racist bills passed this year in Georgia and Alabama. As a mayoral candidate, Reed called himself “a civil rights lawyer,” leaving out the key detail that his practice represented the corporations that violated civil rights, not the black, brown, elderly or disabled plaintiffs whose rights had been violated. The day before being sworn in as mayor Reed promised local business leaders to deal with downtown “panhandlers” in what he called a “very muscular” fashion. The term “panhandlers” is shorthand for homeless black males, even though any sociologist or person who works with the homeless will tell you that only white homeless men can beg on the street. Unless they are very elderly or handicapped, black men are considered inherently too inherently “threatening” to be successful street beggars. The convention and tourist industry seems to want black men, especially homeless black men out of downtown Atlanta. Hence an obsession for Kasim Reed, and if his wealthy real estate backers is closing down the large homeless shelter at Peachtree & Pine, at the edge of downtown Atlanta only a mile from the site of Occupy Atlanta where hundreds of men, many of them gainfully employed, sleep every night.

Where the Occupy Movement in Atlanta May Be Going

About half the Atlanta occupation in Woodruff Park was composed of homeless mostly black men who had been in the park on a daily basis before the occupation. When the mostly white occupiers brought tents and food in, some the homeless got tents too, and were able to use the portable toilets. The homeless men were fed along with the occupiers, and took part in daily marches to banks, the scenes of police shootings and other activities. Though significant tensions existed within and among the occupiers, homeless and not, the two were beginning to learn how to work together.

Headquarters of the occupation, according to some of its leaders, may be moving to the Peachtree-Pine shelter complex at the edge of downtown. In contrast to cities where the mostly white occupations have utterly failed to connect with the ongoing struggles of local residents, Atlanta's occupiers are being driven into the arms of the homeless community. The next version of Occupy Atlanta will be even less to the liking of city officials and business leaders.

Why are police arresting thousands and dispersing “Occupy” gatherings in dozens of cities across the nation? Because they know that the occupy movement is a clear, present and persistent danger to established authority. People are emerging from their homes --- if they still have homes --- freeing themselves from TV and shopping, if they still have anything to shop with. They are coming out on corners in hundreds of cities and towns, most of them, for their first political activity beyond the narrow vote-and-go-home model sold to them by the two corporate parties.

Neither occupations nor occupiers are perfect. People are coming as they are, bringing the baggage of racism and classism and sexism, of divergent political views, of poverty, homelessness and despair. But they are coming. They are eager to connect with each other, to connect with whatever movement exists, or to help bring one into being that can challenge and change the world they live in. They are ready to learn and do real politics. What could possibly be more subversive, and more hopeful?

Read the Original Commentary at:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/occupy-atlanta-vs-kasim-reed-black-misleadership-class-and-one-percent

October Wind

2011-10-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

Cleaning up my office and picked up my copy of Terraces of Light by Pulitzer Prize (1938) winning poet, Marya Zaturenska. A short poem, October Wind caught my attention and gave me pause to consider what is happening now.

The October wind has blown
On the fresh fields, the virgin land:
There the crisp river runs
And the air is full of change.
Man reaps what he has sown.

Gold and red the waving trees
In the autumnal weather;
Your feet lag in the long walk
You take in the forever.
The cold end is manifest
in the brilliant trees, the falling leaves.
The hesitant birds have flown.
Man reaps what he has sown.

Of one who neither cares or sees
You dream and weep
For nature's old felicities
Tumbled in iron sleep:
That body blooms deep underground
Nor needs your teas; such beauty, power,
Such lyric pathos lingers where
His spirit climbs time's moving stair
With active limbs and living hair.
Though all is change where the wind has blown--
Man must reap what he has sown.

What is that October Wind in this age? I first read Zaturenska when this was first published, I was in college and Dylan was reminding us that the Times, They are a-Changin'. Could Occupy Wall Street, or wherever, be that wind? If not, then Zaturenska's cold wind is surely manifest, though it may be from a very hot climate. What I take away from this reading is that "all is change where the wind has blown--" and it is folly to try to live according to old patterns. We have yet to reap what we have sown... that is a bit of what OWS is all about. There will be a new normal and we may not like it unless we shape ourselves to live in that world.

A new New Normal?

2011-10-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have just started to read David Wann's book The New Normal: an agenda for resonsible living. It is an optimistic book, maybe overly, as the introduction sets that tone.

The big picture is that production and consumption will no longer be the defining characteristics of the next civilization -- cultural richness, efficiency, cooperation, expression, ecological design, and biological restoration will be.

That was enough to make me think about this term, the "new normal". That phrase is in such common parlance that there are over 4 million hits on google and even a thenewnormal.com web site, though hardly worth looking at.

One view of the new normal is climate. We are on a track to bring catastrophic change to the world through our non-action on climate mitigation, trying to prevent run-away warming. Those who would act are confronted immediately by the wide spread notion that any governmental action is the first step to socialism. I rather doubt that, since any effective action requires an end to growth economics, but both capitalism as practiced in the US and socialism as practiced so far in any country, are both enamored with the idea of growth.

Another view is economic, a new normal that is shaped by decreasing supplies of resources, especially those used to produce energy, and a corresponding increase in the costs of what we have, especially energy. Both optimistic and pessimistic versions of this exist. Some look to the economic arena as a major tipping point towards a Jared Diamond like Collapse. Some would see mankind as willing and able to adapt to the new normal by building new structures.

Wann, whose book started my thinking here, expresses that latter view quite well.

The future is waiting It is time for man to stop seeing the world as it is, and begin to see it as it should be.

I can not think of a better approach for a Green candidate. Tell the people how the world should be and enlist their help to make it so.

GP: Wall Street Protest Message is not 'Vote Democrat'

2011-10-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

Green Party to Democratic Apologists: The Message of the Wall Street Protests is Not 'Vote Democrat'

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Sunday, October 9, 2011

Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, cell 202-904-7614, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@gp.org

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders sharply criticized Democratic Party supporters online and in the media who have tried to turn the ongoing Occupy Wall Street, Occupy America, and October 2011 demonstrations across America into an appeal to vote Democrat and reelect President Obama in 2012.

Many of the protesters have expressed their disgust with two-party politics (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/wall-street-protesters-disgusted-parties-14687840) and the influence of corporate money. Organizers have rejected attempts to shoehorn the movement into any party and assert that the protesters come from diverse political persuasions.

Greens, who are participating in the protests and among the organizers, have pointed to the Green Party's alternative vision for America, as expressed in the Green New Deal (http://www.greenpartywatch.org/2010/08/11/62-green-candidates-endorse-green-new-deal) and on the party's web site (http://www.gp.org).

The Green Party offers a platform for peace, economic security for working people, millions of new green jobs in conservation and clean energy development, an end to fossil fuel addiction, real steps for curbing global climate change and restoring the health of the planet, universal health care (Medicare For All), and reforms that would limit the power of corporations and restore the promise of participatory democracy and fair elections. Green candidates do not accept corporate money.

Mark Dunlea, co-founder of the Green Party of New York State: "The Democratic Party does not speak for the Occupy Wall Street, Occupy America, and October 2011 protesters. No political party speaks for the protesters, not even the Green Party. The protesters speak for themselves. The Green Party has endorsed and joined the demos because we share the same frustration and anger as the other protesters. Greens are there because we bring alternative ideas like the Green New Deal. And we're there because we encourage the 99 percent -- We The People -- to organize, end pro-corporate two-party rule, and replace the politicians in public office who enabled Wall Street's theft of America's future. This can only happen through an independent alliance with the same diversity we're seeing at the protests: labor activists, Greens, progressives, anarchists, libertarians, nonvoters, disappointed Democrats and Republicans, and all others who want real change."

Sanda Everette, co-coordinator of the Coordinating Committee of the Green Party of California: "If pro-Democrat web sites and the media believe that the message of the protests is 'Vote Democrat' and 'Reelect Obama' in 2012, they've missed the point. The current demonstrations became necessary after Election Day 2008, when too many liberal, progressive, and antiwar Democrats declared 'Mission Accomplished' with Barack Obama's election victory. The Democratic Party has proved itself as dedicated to Wall Street as the GOP. We look forward to more protests and direct action as the election season unfolds, especially during the 2012 Democratic and Republican conventions."

Farheen Hakeem, Green candidate for the Minnesota State Senate in District 61 (http://www.farheenhakeem.org) and co-chair of the Green Party of the United States: "Say no to the parties of war and corporate money! That's our message to all Americans who are worried about the dangerous direction that the two Titanic Parties have steered our country. If the field of presidential candidates is limited to incumbent Obama and the Republican nominee after the primaries, then everything the Wall Street protesters are talking about will be erased from the election season debate and from the media. Hopes for a progressive challenge in the Democratic primaries are unrealistic. The challenger will inevitably be defeated by the Obama campaign juggernaut, which is already loaded with corporate campaign checks, and the challenger's supporters will find themselves muzzled, with the expectation that they'll vote Democrat."

Terry Baum, Green candidate for Mayor of San Francisco (http://terryjoanbaum.com): "Barack Obama received more Wall Street money than any other candidate in US history. Instead of change, the Obama Administration gave us Phase 2 of the Bush-Cheney agenda: more Wall Street bailouts, more endless war, more offshore oil drilling and the dangerous Keystone XL pipeline, more mountaintop detonation mining. Instead of financial security for Americans, we got plans to slash Social Security and Medicare. We got minimal assistance for people facing home foreclosures and more crushing debt for college students. We got silence about the racist death penalty and record-high mass incarceration of young black, brown, and poor people in a greedy private prison system. We got a health care bill with mandates that are a direct public subsidy for the insurance industry (originally a Republican proposal), but no universal health care or controls for skyrocketing medical costs. We got impunity for Bush officials who authorized torture and other war crimes -- and more extraordinary rendition, more warrantless surveillance of US citizens, more erosion of due process, more persecution of whistleblowers, and even a secret presidential hit list of Americans targeted for assassination."

Cheri Honkala, Green candidate for Sheriff of Philadelphia (http://www.cherihonkala.com) running on an anti-foreclosure platform, speaking at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC on October 6: "What I'm doing is not symbolic. It's concrete and Bill and Aida and Glenn who's here with me today, like millions of people across this country are gonna lose their homes... unless you take this seriously and not just march about it, pray about it, and sing about it but help me fill every damn poll in Philadelphia where there's a birthplace of revolution and change... We can do this again in this country and take our country back!"

MORE INFORMATION:

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org

Leadership needed to battle climate change

2011-10-07T16:32:00.000-07:00

I had another OpEd in the Morgan Hill Times today. I reviewed a book, Clean Energy Nation, by my congressman, Jerry McNerney. At least one congress critter gets it. I reproduce it here with permission of the Morgan Hill Times.

It was my intention to use this column to review "Clean Energy Nation," the recently published book by Congressman Jerry McNerney and local writer Marty Cheek. While I will mostly write about that, I can not help but mention another book: "The Fate of Greenland," by Philip Conkling ... [et al.]. It provides an essential element that is missing from "Clean Energy Nation."

I am an active blogger who has paid a lot of attention to the problems of climate change and the relationship to our national energy policy as well as the effect of both on water resources. If you have a similar background, there is little that you will learn from reading "Clean Energy Nation." Most of the book takes you through things that you already know: fossil fuels are a finite resource that have a limited future; the continued use of fossil fuels is not sustainable for an extended period of time, future supplies of coal, oil and natural gas will be increasingly difficult and expensive to obtain.

If you happen to be a confirmed climate change denier, you probably will not be convinced by what anything that McNerney and Cheek have written. As long as there are those like meteorologist Joe Bastardi (late of Accuweather) who are willing to publish nonsense as fact, we will continue to have such problems.

Still, thanks to their knowledge and research, there are things that I did learn. "Clean Energy Nation" is a well documented book with an extensive bibliography and end notes to identify the sources for their statements. For example, relating to the feasibility of replacing current fossil fuel driven electric generation with nuclear, we are given the fact that this is probably less sustainable that continued use of fossil fuels.

"The rich uranium ores required to achieve this reduction are, however, so limited that if the entire present world electricity demand were to be provided by nuclear power, these ores would be exhausted within nine years. Use of the remaining poorer ores in nuclear reaction would produce more CO2 emissions than burning fossil fuels directly."

McNerney and Cheek are unique in viewing these problems through the lens of political history. This is appropriate in that the problems we have now are much more political than technological. They managed to cover almost all areas of concern beyond the obvious ones of electricity generation and transportation: public health, agriculture, education, national security. Each is summarized so that it is easy to understand where the impacts come from without slogging through too much detail.

What I missed in "Clean Energy Nation," but found in "The Fate of Greenland," is the recognition that there is an aspect of our current situation that should give a sense of urgency, should create a political will for action now, rather than stumbling along hoping for a technological miracle that is not likely to happen.

In a book filled with wonderful photography of Greenland now, underscoring the rate at which it is currently changing, the contributors to "Fate of Greenland" lay out the scientific data which warns us that the climate may change very quickly, at times in less than a decade. Such tipping point events as they chronicle are part of the language of global warming, but not with the astonishing level of facts that are laid out here.

This sense of urgency has both an ecological and an economic basis. While most of our attention is give to the ecological, generating a Reganesque rolling of the eyes as they mutter "there they go again" the economic issue is not so obvious. I wish they had clearly stated this one fact: For every year that the world delays addressing climate change, transforming to a clean-energy union of nations, it will cost our economies an additional $500 billion. That is a burden we are loading on to our grandchildren.

In this election cycle, it appears that the denial of climate change, or at least a plan to limit any action to combat it, is a prerequisite for selection as a candidate in the Republican Party. It will take strong political leadership to change America. " ... if we are to create a better tomorrow for ourselves and for future generations of American, we need to use effective communication and share an inspiring vision in our quest to become a clean-energy nation."

It's Easier to Occupy Wall Street Than it is to Change It

2011-10-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

Writing about Occupy Wall Street is unquestionably an exercise in futility. Those of us in the baby boomer generation have the impulse to wrap our arms around them and sigh in recognition of the sense of exasperation, desperation and righteousness that engulfed us in our youth. We understand that when things get worse and we have no control of events, we want to stop the world from its “normality”. When political leaders fail to inspire us with a common vision, we seek a new identity, a new vision and a new world. There is no question that the election of Obama has resulted in neither hope nor change. And we know:”It’s not fair!”

Those of us removed from the protests are watching our own biographies unfold again and we grasp to see it done right this time. Fix this thing here, do this thing there and everything little thing is gonna be alright. But, as soon as we intrude in the drama, we become interlopers in the “movement”. We are, in point of fact, outsiders who fail to grasp the dynamic and the new zeitgeist that has reconfigured the world around us. 1968 comes to our minds as the world social order heaved and the world was challenged for not living up to our standards and expectations. Today, we see turmoil in the Middle East, North Africa and Greece. In 1968 it was France, Czechoslovakia, China and Vietnam. But that was then and this is now.

Words, nothing but words. The young people out there pitch their tents, we pitch our rhetoric. We are on the outside looking in. Greens send a message of support saying “Right on! Now join us and finish the job by getting elected.” But, even Greens are aware of how closed the electoral system is and how difficult real reform is. Revolution appeals in its apparent ability to wipe the slate clear. Occupy Wall Street abounds with anti-capitalism. All revolts seek to sweep clean the vestiges of the old. We have witnessed that the old order has a logical continuity after the smoke of revolution clears. The Thermidor stands erect through habit, through economics, through culture and through history. The people seek normalcy- the simple ability to live our individual lives without the trauma of changes that turn our worlds upside down.

Today, young people fear the future and old people fear the present. Fear has intruded and we seek a return to normalcy. “FIX IT!” is the cry. We don’t like it. Young people seek to reconfigure the forces that stand in the way. Old people seek to protect what we have. Politicians posture and feed the lions of change for their own advantage. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are both expressions of the fear and frustration of people. We are all abandoned on a runaway train and none of us like it.

But, we are being spoon-fed and the same fear that evokes protest paralyses logical thinking. It pushes us to grasp for straws and look for simple solutions. We find ourselves repeating the rhetoric of the cable stations and radio talk shows. We take our politics from comedians and actors as if they had some God-given insight. Our panic has spread and we invite it to grow. It has stretched to various degrees to cities and universities across the country.

The stock market remains open. Wall Street has always been occupied during work hours. Banks seek to confront the cold economics and people scream at them. Ninety percent of Americans work and continue to go to their jobs. But even they feel the fear. Those of us unemployed and over sixty are weary and worried that the future is behind us, not in front of us.

There really is a point where a society begins to disintegrate. The social contract is violated. The fear overrides all other emotions. Fear of climate change and catastrophic weather, fear of economic insecurity, fear of impending doom for humanity and the planet envelopes us. The words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt come to mind. “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” It shuts down our strongest attributes as human beings. It shuts off communication with those we share a common destiny with. It makes us live behind locked doors and see every new face as a threat to us.

We have dug ourselves into this hole. Those who would seek to blame others fail to distinguish between what has happened in the past and what we can do together to fix what is broken. What it took to break the economy is not the same as what it takes to fix it. Structural reform enables us as a society to reconfigure the institutions that have so much influence in our lives. Working WITH our neighbors enables us to pool our resources and energy for constructive purposes. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. We need to be tough and resourceful. We need to find new solutions. We need to move forward with a new vision and not backwards.

We have not yet faced the depression or the World War of our prior generation. We know that many of us will need to help others. We know that things to come will not be as “good” as things in the past. Let’s not project beyond our ability to predict what is to come.

Let’s talk to others and meet with others. Let’s take to the streets and work in the elections. Let’s do so with candor and vigor. Find our own voice that speaks to our own concerns and needs. Let’s build new organization and establish new mechanisms that go beyond opposition and venture into creation. Occupy Wall Street by all means. But recognize that it will still be there when all is said and done. It is simply the concrete expression of the economic activity of billions of individuals around the world.

How we work together will prove as important as what we do to try and solve the problems. If we are willing to listen we can learn. When we utilize the strengths of some and the distinct strengths of others we find new alternatives emerge. I have worked in banking. I have worked in public schools. I have worked in a hospital. The success of each setting is not simply what we do as individuals as it is what we can accomplish together. In a Multi-Disciplinary Treatment Team the array of professionals who interact daily with the patient come together and review the patients’ progress and problems. They discuss behaviors and problems. They look for the appearance and the realities behind the appearance. They share perceptions and develop hypotheses of appropriate interventions that address the realities.

None of us are secure on our own. But no one is expecting that. The scripts of childhood to be independent need to be developed into the mature grasp of our mutual dependence on one another and our capacity to heal and help others. We are not simply observers subject to the torrent of history. We are the shapers of it as well.

Scott McLarty: "After the Wall Street Protests..."

2011-10-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

After the Wall Street Protests? Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator at Green Party of the United States, has posted a manifesto on Firedoglake making the case for an independent party.

Posted on Firedoglake, October 4, 2011
After the Wall Street Protests: To Change America’s Political Direction, We Need a Voters’ Revolt and a Permanent Noncorporate Alternative to the Titanic Parties
By Scott McLarty

The protests against Wall Street’s criminal theft of America’s future, to be followed on October 6 by the 'October 2011' occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, are cause for optimism. Maybe 'Arab Spring' is finally coming to the US. ('American Autumn'?) The protests, now spreading to other cities, are continuing despite the troops of police ready to club, pepperspray, and corral peaceful protesters into nets for mass arrest.

The biggest impediment to the democracy movement is not Fox News and pundits who believe that the Occupy Wall Street demos are a demand for 'big government', as if their entire understanding comes from a GOP talking points memo. It’s not the dismissive tone of journalists from the New York Times and other mainstream papers. It’s not the cable news stations who misreport the goals of the demonstrations or ignore them altogether.

The greatest danger is that many Americans sympathetic to the 'Occupy Wall Street' grievances, and maybe a small number of the protesters themselves, will soon fall into a familiar habit. In a few months we can expect to hear some of them declare "We must vote to reelect President Obama in 2012, to prevent a Republican victory."

The Republicans have already won, regardless of who takes the oath of office in January 2013. Endless wars, Wall Street pillage, and the trashing of the US Constitution are no longer the exclusive intellectual property of the GOP.

Barack Obama’s progressive supporters acknowledge that he didn’t quite fulfill their expectations as an agent of change and a bulwark against war and the predatory power of corporations. But the GOP is so much worse, they say, that we have to keep voting Democrat. This is nonsense.

The liberals, progressives, leftists, editors and columnists for The Nation and Daily Kos and other publications who insist we vote Dem in every election cycle are preaching self-defeat.

Apologists for the Democrats will say, “But there are some real differences between the two parties!” That’s true. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would not have been repealed by a Republican administration.

Overall, however, the differences between D and R have grown more and more insubstantial during the past few decades. In many cases, Democratic presidents used their power to fulfill the GOP agenda, often accomplishing what Republican couldn’t by themselves, for example, President Clinton’s passage of NAFTA with help from a Democratic Congress and President Obama’s willingness to carve up Social Security and Medicare.

On nearly every big issue from the wars to Wall Street’s looting of the economy to offshore drilling and oil pipelines, President Obama has shown a smooth continuity from the Bush-Cheney Administration. When he clashed with Republicans in the health care reform debate, the argument was really over which side could best accommodate for-profit insurance companies and other special interests, with Democrats offering mandates that require everyone to purchase private coverage, an idea they pilfered from Republican Congressmembers who introduced it in the 1990s. (See “Whose side are they on? An unexhaustive recent history of bipartisan convergence” below.)

The major newspapers, network and cable news shows, and other media inflate the small differences because they like to make the news as simple-minded as possible, and that means limiting the public debate to D versus R on any big issue. Other points of view, such as the one expressed by the Wall Street protesters, aren’t fit for serious coverage, or sometimes any coverage at all.

Progressives who believe that President Obama “is really one of us” are as deluded as conservatives who believe Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and other phony populists and corporate royalists when they call President Obama a socialist, by which they mean he’s a few degrees less rabid in his devotion to corporate rule than they are.

Instead of Democrat versus Republican, we should look at US politics as D and R versus the rest of us. Elections have become a contest between Democrats ready to fulfill GOP agenda and the GOP itself. Whether we elect a Democrat or a Republican to the White House, whether Democrats or Republicans win control of Congress, the center of political gravity remains on the side of the GOP. As George Lakoff has observed in several books and numerous essays, Democrats play according to Republican rules. Even when they’re telling outright lies, Republicans deal in gut-level messages that Democrats find themselves parroting: Support our troops! End big government!

Both of the Titanic parties accept enormous sums of money from corporate PACs to do the bidding of corporate special interest lobbies, but the GOP is far more shameless about its service to corporate elites and its ideology of privatization, deregulation, and concentration of economic power.

Democrats, on the other hand, want to be perceived as the party of the people, but won’t wean themselves off corporate campaign checks. They retreat from their stated principles and traditional constituencies and ignore progressive voices within their own party on the assumption that voters on the left have “nowhere else to turn.”

The retreat of the Democrats, their confused allegiances, and embrace of so much of the GOP agenda have meant a license for Republicans to move to ever greater extremes. Now we have a ‘liberal’ party that has moved to the right of Eisenhower and Nixon and a rightwing party that has descended into irrationality. Every decade, the political paradigm drifts further and further to the right.

If we want to interrupt this drift, we have to think outside of the two-party power bloc. The Occupy Wall Street protesters and their supporters have no voice in the two-party mainstream of electoral politics. It’s assumed that –if they vote at all — they will line up behind President Obama and a Democratic machine that regards them with contempt.

Time for a Voters’ Revolt

Dropping out of the elections and refusing to vote are not an option. Until we take steps now to break down the rule of the Titanic Parties and replace them in public office, we face decades of more endless wars, more erosion of basic human rights and protections for working people, and dwindling chances of a solution to global climate change.

Activism should not be limited to electoral politics. But the movement for a change in America’s political direction must include a voters’ revolt and the emergence of a strong and permanent alternative party that rejects corporate money and influence.

Without such an insurgence in 2012, the following topics will be missing from the election season debate after April or May: the plundering of the US economy by the financial industry; multi-trillion-dollar bailouts for Wall Street; the assault on public sector unions; universal health care (Medicare For All); ending the endless wars; the death penalty (Troy Davis will be forgotten); the dangers of the Tar Sands pipeline, offshore drilling, nuclear power, mountaintop removal mining, warrantless spying on US citizens, torture, and other gross abuses of power. Neither incumbent Obama nor the GOP nominee will mention these things.

Despite the best intentions of progressives like Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, and others, the Democratic Party will not be rehabilitated. A progressive challenge to President Obama in the primaries, as recently encouraged by Ralph Nader and others, will keep some of the complaints and ideals of the Wall Street protesters alive for a few months. By late spring, the challenger will be defeated by the Obama campaign juggernaut and the challenger’s supporters will find themselves muzzled, with the expectation that they’ll vote Dem anyway. That’s what happens in every presidential election.

The usual objection to voting third-party is that the candidate might ‘spoil’ by subtracting votes from a Democrat and enabling a Republican victory, with the role played by Green presidential nominee Ralph Nader in 2000 as the classical example. There are numerous problems with this accusation — it ignores manipulation and voter obstruction by GOP officials in Florida, a patently biased Supreme Court ruling that canceled vote recounts and delivered the White House to George W. Bush, and Al Gore’s own feeble campaign, which lost double-digit points in polls during the final months of the race (while Mr. Nader’s percentage never rose above a few percentage points) and failed to take even Tennessee, Mr. Gore’s home state. In Florida, the number of registered Dems who voted for Mr. Bush was four times the number who voted for Mr. Nader. Why don’t Democratic apologists ever apply the spoiler label to Republicans?

The assertion that Mr. Nader siphoned votes away from Mr. Gore assumes that Democratic candidates have some kind of prior claim to our votes. The subtext of the spoiler accusation, when leveled by pundits and politicians who’ve made no effort to promote reforms like Instant Runoff Voting that would eliminate the alleged spoiler effect, is that two-party rule must never face interference from alternative parties and independent candidates. It’s a notion of democracy only one step removed from single-party states like China and the Soviet Union.

The only fair and democratic elections are multi-party elections, in which every voter has the right to see more than a choice between Big Mac and Whopper on the ballot, the right to know which candidate best represents his or her own interests and ideals, and the right to vote for that candidate.

Imagine that multi-party democracy existed in the US. The election of a half-dozen noncorporate alternative-party candidates to Congress would alter the political landscape, with Ds and Rs no longer each others’ sole competition.

If such a candidate participated in the presidential debates, he or she would raise ideas that no Democratic or Republican nominee would ever touch, like Medicare For All and rapid withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Commission on Presidential Debates is owned and run by the Democratic and Republican parties, who took control over it in order to bar other parties’ candidates. D and R politicians in many states have conspired to rig the ballot access rules of many states to block third-party and independent candidates from running for office. The two Titanic parties have been corrupted by their own exclusive power as much as by corporate money and clout.

These obstacles are all surmountable, but only through a concerted mass effort led by a broad alliance of those critical of the two-party status quo, the bureaucratic and political power of major corporations, and the expanding power of government. The Occupy Wall Street protests, which have drawn progressives, Greens, anarchists, libertarians, nonvoters, frustrated Democrats and Republicans, and many others, are a model for such an alliance.

Alternatives like the Green Party are waiting for their moment — the moment of mass epiphany when Americans recognize them as an imperative comparable to the anti-slavery Republican Party in the mid 19th century. The Occupy Wall Street protesters are the abolitionists of the 21st century, demanding an end to the predatory power of Wall Street and other corporate elites over our political system, our jobs, our homes, our savings, our health, nearly aspect of our lives.

Until we recognize that Democrats are as dangerous to America’s future as Republicans, until we spark a national voters’ revolt, we’ll continue to commit political suicide every Election Day.

The Occupy Wall Street participants want to push the country in a different direction, away from corporate oligarchy, military aggression, and environmental depredation. Protests and direct action must continue as the election season unfolds, especially during next year’s national Democratic and Republican conventions. We must find, build, and promote noncorporate ways to live our lives and expand participatory democracy (see Ben Manski’s essay “The Protest Wave: Why the Political Class Can’t Understand Our Demands”).

And if we want these things to have a lasting effect, the “99 percent” movement that inspired the current demonstrations must move to the next level, which must include independent electoral action in 2012 and beyond.

Sidebar: Whose side are they on? An unexhaustive recent history of bipartisan convergence

• Is President Obama a “warrior for the middle class”?

In 2008, Mr. Obama became the highest recipient of Wall Street campaign contributions in history. After he was elected, he followed in the footsteps of Republican presidents by stacking his staff with Wall Street insiders and operators — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, economics advisor Larry Summers, Chief of Staff Bill Daley — whose deregulatory policies made the 2008 economic meltdown inevitable.

With bipartisan support in Congress, the Obama Administration bailed out the Wall Street firms that were responsible for the meltdown, while offering minimal aid to Americans facing unemployment and home foreclosures because of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis that these firms created. The White House and Congress have taken no steps to restore the Glass-Steagall Act or enact other reforms to curtail Wall Street power and prevent the next crisis.

The federal government plans to begin selling off the massive portfolio of foreclosed homes now owned by HUD, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac to private investment conglomerates (“vulture funds”), possibly the “largest transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector” in history.

Such actions were predictable by September 2008, before Mr. Obama’s election victory, when he undercut his pledge of “change we can believe in” with an endorsement of the first Wall Street bailout, in harmony with the Bush White House and his GOP competition, John McCain.

After promising to do so during his campaign, President Obama has refused to renegotiate NAFTA and other international trade pacts. These agreements, which tend to favor corporate power and profit over the rights and well-being of working people and the health of the environment, were authorized by President Clinton, who had initially opposed NAFTA while running for the White House in 1992.

Democrats have refused to repeal Taft-Hartley restrictions on union organizing. When Republican Gov. Walker want on the warpath against the organizing rights and benefits for public sector workers in Wisconsin in early 2011, Democratic Gov. Cuomo launched a similar assault against public sector workers in New York.

• Are Democrats the party of health care reform and Social Security?

The Democratic Party discarded its platform promise, since 1948, of a national health program while Bill Clinton was president. In 2009, Democratic leaders declared that universal health care (single-payer, also called Medicare For All) would be “off the table” — Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus’s words when he organized the health care reform round tables.

President Obama’s health care bill imposes mandates that function as a direct public subsidy to the health insurance cartel, an idea that Republicans proposed during the 1990s. Whether Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010 or the Republicans prevailed in blocking it, the insurance industry, Big Pharma, and other corporate lobbies would be the real winners.

Contrary to the current belief that the President recently compromised on Social Security and Medicare, he made his intention to slash them clear in 2010 when he appointed his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (“Catfood Commission”) and stacked it with politicians, economists, and company heads hostile to both programs. Rather than alleviating the skyrocketing costs of health care, the highest cause of personal bankruptcies, Obama policies further threaten middle- and low-income Americans and burden retirees.

• Are Democrats the party of social justice?

President Obama has remained silent about record US incarceration rates — the world’s highest, surpassing repressive countries like China and Iran — and the fact that most of those behind bars are young, poor, and mostly black or brown. Since President Clinton, Democratic leaders have supported the growth of the private prison industry, which profits by filling up cells with more inmates.

Both Democrats and Republicans support the War on Drugs, which has ruined lives and caused endless devastation in poor neighborhoods, and the death penalty, despite racial disparities and a growing list of exonerations and errors. President Obama refused to comment on the fate of Troy Davis, who was executed by the state of Georgia despite significant doubts about his guilt (seven out of nine witnesses changed their testimony, some of them claiming police coercion).

• The environment and global warming?

President Obama has authorized more offshore oil drilling (despite the lessons of the disastrous BP spill in the Gulf); endorsed new nuclear power plants that will make money for energy companies while taxpayers assume the high cost and high liability (despite the example of Fukushima); allowed mountaintop removal mining to continue to obliterate and poison the West Virginia landscape; remained silent about the extremely dangerous technique called hydrofracking for natural gas in New York and Pennsylvania; endorsed the myth of clean coal; and is on the verge of approving the dangerous Keystone XL pipeline from the Canadian tar sands.

On September 2, 2011, President Obama killed proposed national air-quality standards for smog, overriding a plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce air pollution. His administration, and Democrats in general, have supported greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes (“cap and trade”) that will allow polluting companies to trade and collect licenses to continue polluting. US obstruction remains the greatest impediment to the Kyoto Protocols.

• Peace?

Democrats pretended to be the antiwar party in recent elections, but in 2006 they boosted funding for the wars after gaining control of Congress. President Obama escalated the war on Afghanistan and expanded it into Pakistan, and launched a new invasion (Libya) without the consent of Congress. While ordering the withdrawal of some troops from Iraq, he is implementing Donald Rumsfeld’s plan to replace US armed forces, which are directly accountable to Congress, with private “mercenary” security firms, which aren’t.

In October 2002, the Democratic leadership voted for President Bush’s request for an extra-constitutional transfer of war power from Congress to the White House, effectively endorsing his plan to invade Iraq on fraudulent claims about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, nuclear weapons acquisition, and collusion with al-Qaeda. Under the Obama Administration, Democrats have adopted the neocon doctrine of unilateral aggression and the use of military force against countries at peace with the US. There has been virtually no difference between the Bush and Obama policies on the Middle East. The Obama Administration, which continues to arm Israel, had no objection to the Israel’s invasion of Gaza and massacre of civilians and strenuously objected to Palestine’s bid for UN recognition.

• The US Constitution and international law?

The Obama Justice Department has refused to investigate Bush-Cheney officials for torture and other gross abuses of power, constitutional violations, and war crimes. The administration has continued many of the same policies: warrantless surveillance of US citizens, denial of habeas corpus, extraordinary rendition, maintenance of “black sites,” harassment and legal action against whistleblowers. President Obama has surpassed the last administration in his intention to assassinate US citizens suspected of terrorism without any semblance of due process, as in the recent case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born cleric killed in Yemen, whose name was on a secret “hit list” of people the President has targeted for summary execution.

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Scott McLarty is Media Coordinator at Green Party of the United States
This article is reposted from Firedoglake.

Euroopean Greens dissed Nuclear Energy.

2011-10-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

Some may wonder how Germany was able to spin the energy wheel around to toss nuclear off the table. I learned today (just today... shame on me) that it was all the work of those pesky Greens.

While waiting for the dentist to get around to extracting one of my molars, I was reading Clean Energy Nation by Jerry McNerney (my Congressman) and Marty Cheek. It was there, I found the following:

An analysis report title "Nuclear Power: The Energy Balance" was prepared for the Green parties of the European Parliament by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith for the United Nations Climate Conference in 2000. Since then, they have updated their report several times and they warn that the nuclear-power industry's portrayal of nuclear energy as a solution to climate change might not be quite on the mark. The authors state in their detailed study that "the use of nuclear power causes, at the end of the road and under the most favorable conditions, approximately one--third as much carbon dioxide (CO2) emission as gas fired electricity production."

Those pesky Greens playing the game of tell the truth.

McNerney and Cheek continue:

Then then warn us about the unsustainability of nuclear power. "The rich uranium ores required to achieve this reduction are, however, so limited that if the entire present world electricity demand were to be provided by nuclear power, these ores would be exhausted within nine years. Use of the remaining poorer ores in nuclear reaction would produce more CO2 emissions that burning fossil fuels directly.

This is the blunt statement of the truth that we need to be hearing from Green leadership in the US.

Occupy Wall Street, and then what?

2011-10-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

I have a great deal of admiration for those who have taken to the street, especially Wall Street, to protest what unbridled greed has done to our country. It takes courage to do that when one's job, or the possibility of getting a job in this down economy, is threatened by your action. While many have taken issue with some of the coverage, some of the better coverage still show up the weaknesses of this movement. I believe that we need to have more media savvy folks step forward as volunteer spokespersons for this grassroots effort. This need became so apparent during a CNN segment that I watched last week.. The journalist stopped a protestor and said something like this: "I see you have a case against the excesses of capitalism. What would you like to see in its place?" Then, with the microphone in his face, the protestor just stood there, lost for any words.

As a political party, Greens can not allow that loss for an alternative explanation stand. There needs to be an answer to that question if Greens are to have a chance with a national candidate. Lacking that answer, there will be no electoral success.

If anyone believes that this is not very serious. then they need to read the Bloomberg News investigative report on the Koch Brothers, David and Charles, and the privately held corporation that funds so much of the Tea Party efforts.

For six decades around the world, Koch Industries has blazed a path to riches — in part, by making illicit payments to win contracts, trading with a terrorist state, fixing prices, neglecting safety and ignoring environmental regulations. At the same time, Charles and David Koch have promoted a form of government that interferes less with company actions.

That is about as blunt as one can get. So every time you hear a Congressman talk about ending excessive regulation, or gutting the EPA, you are experiencing the effect of Koch power. Knowing that, what are the alternative for Greens? As a political party, Greens do not have a single answer to that question? There is no economic theory that sets Greens apart from the others.

Perhaps the only thing we can agree on is that we need to put an end to Corporate Personhood. Most Greens support Move to Amend with varying degrees of enthusiasm. If that is the single alternative idea that we have, then we need to get Tea Party Angry that this fiction is still allowed.

Street Theater Politics

2011-09-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

In his post here yesterday, Martin Zehr wrote the following:

Street theatre has become all too often a justification for avoiding electoral politics. Slogans too often replace sound policies.

I could not avoid commenting that this was so true.

Yesterday evening, I was watching Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC. His Last Word segment regarding the ongoing protest on and against Wall Street is a good example. He was interviewing a master of street theater, Michael Moore and they both managed to get the story wrong.

It is truly good theater and I support the idea that we need to call Wall Street to account. If they had stopped at the first segment with MM, I might have agreed. However, they didn't and ended up trying to solve the problem of income income equality. There they made the same mistake that the Obama administration has done, expecting that a magical application of growth will be the elixir that gets us out of trouble. Growth is what will give hope to the masses. Unfortunately, such growth is no longer a rational prescription for what ails this country.

Even more ironically in-appropriate to the situation is the fact that you had to watch a commercial from Exxon-Mobil (2X) before getting to see the segment through to the end.

Growth is going to be forever limited by resource constraints. The first area of concern in to be found in the energy / water / climate change nexus. These three areas will be tightly linked, if not forever, at least for the lifespan of the next generation. Energy will be increasingly expensive. Fresh water will arrive in floods where we don't need more or not at all where we do need it. The extraction of new energy, especially from sources like fracking the Marcellus Shale or tapping Canada's Alberta Tar Sands, is going to take more and more fresh water leaving it unusable for anything else, contaminated and too expensive to clean up. And when we get done, all we will have done is exacerbate the problem of global warming, pushing the cycle even further beyond tolerable.

If Michael Moore, given his taking over the media regarding the Occupy Wall Street event, can not make this point, then Greens damn well need to be the one to tell these truths:

that the world has changed so much we can not longer grow our way out of trouble,
that we must not purchase buy economic ease by condemning our children to live in a sweat-box,
that corporations are not citizens,

Lawrence, rather than give MM yet another soap box for his feel good populism, try once to put a real Green in front of your camera: Howie Hawkins, D.r Jill Stein, Dr. Kent Mesplay. Or would that offend your Wall Street Corporate Sponsors.

For another view of Occupy Wall Street, read that of Green John Halle here:

Today’s NYT’s coverage of the protestors, predictably contemptuous and dismissive, sets the stage perfectly for this crackdown-and provides grounds for all the right thinking people who are the Times’ primary demographic to avert their eyes. The few decent people who find out about this may get on the subway and head to Wall Street to bear witness, and maybe even act.

But I can’t say I’m in the least optimistic that anything like this is in the cards-certainly nothing approximating the display of force which we must marshall to make a difference.

Regional Planning for urban brownfields

2011-09-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

Co-Author Martin Zehr was not able to log in and post this himself. He sent it to me via email.
___
Urban reconstruction of brownfields is a Green agenda and the more we say it the more we can develop policies that address education, housing, public transit, violence, renewable energy and homelessness. How long are people willing to accept the failures of public education? No liberal here. No radical trying to promote government spending. We have failed to develop the programs that are up to the task.

Decentralization and grassroots democracy means Greens are willing to engage all communities in the tasks and develop the input they can provide. Regional planning is not always pretty and may not always look the same, but it provides real perceptions, important science and economic data and the opportunity to let the people decide.

We face tough times ahead. Many of us have endured tough times for years. To succeed we need to play on the field that's there and build towards a new one that empowers people and addresses our real problems together. We need to build real leaders in our communities by really listening, by incorporating sound input and not simply posturing. Street theatre has become all too often a justification for avoiding electoral politics. Slogans too often replace sound policies.

We need to be as critical of our own role as we are of the Democratic Urban Machines that dominate too many metropolitan regions. Fiscal accountability needs to be incorporated so that we do not simply rob Peter to pay Paul, or drive municipal governments into bankruptcy. We know Dems will not simply rollover as we gain support. We have to anticipate that and develop long term strategies. The third way is not to simply up the ante of the liberal agenda, but to rigorously engage our communities in real debates and present real alternatives.

As things stand now, the Green Party will simply be another experiment in liberal third parties that rises and then falls from the weight of their own preoccupation to “do the right thing”. Configuring a new political landscape inherently means that we are willing to establish new priorities and cut up existing constituencies consistent with our goals and objectives as a political party. A Green New Deal fails to do this. It attempts to maintain the historical coalition of the Great Society. It does not incorporate the reality of the economic and fiscal crises in the context of our solutions. It projects the federal government as the employer of last resort as a solution. It fundamentally negates the Key Values of Decentralization, Grassroots Democracy and Community-Based Economics.

The answers do not lie in what I write here. They lie in our communities by working diligently and developing support from the people where they are. Over the years I have had several significant organizing efforts based on the principal that the people teach us. I helped to organize a city-wide coalition of industrial workers against plant closings. I built support for prison reform with the families of prisoners and correction employees that confronted an armed state Secretary of Corrections in a mass demonstration with the simple message of improving visitation and ending super-max facilities. I engaged in a regional water planning process with farmers, water managers, hydrologists, developers and environmentalists that developed a sound 50 year plan through stakeholder input. In each case, there were victories as well as challenges. The point is that if we stick to our Key Values, we really can unite with others who have not been engaged in the past. In each case, the failures were rooted in the inability to translate public support into political action.

We are novices in this regard. Despite our numerous campaigns and elections of public officials, we still let the basics of change slip through our fingers. When our votes are large, we miss using the results as political capital capable of winning concessions that will benefit those who supported us. When we elect officials they become disconnected from the party in developing policy priorities, increasing public education and projecting our unique vision in concrete ways. We let Democrats take the stage from us and undermine our ballot access. But our window of opportunity is closing. Our influence and our role in elections are endangered in most states. Too many “activists” have presumed to know what is good for people without listening to them. Too many friends have been alienated by leadership that only wants to control our political work and are not willing to incorporate the input of others.

Our relevance in the future is not predetermined. It is based on our relevance to the people who we represent. Changing the political culture of our state parties means that we are willing to recognize new voices. It means that we establish priorities that are consistent with public needs and concerns. It means not being afraid of change when it is indicated.

Help Wanted! Green California Graphics Artist

2011-09-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Green Friends,
The time has come for Green Party activists to get ready for the 2012 California elections. One thing we will need are good cartoons, caricatures, graphics expressing the issues in California highlighting the contrast between the Green Party and the 2 Titanic Parties.

The graphic below is from the lead story of the Black Agenda Report, America's leading web site for news, commentary, and analysis from the Black Left. I think this graphic exquisitely expresses the growing revulsion among many African-Americans like me, with the smugness of Democratic Party "Obamamaniacs."

Posted on The Black Agenda Report, September 21, 2001
Barack Obama VS Those Craaaazy Republicans: Is He the Lesser Evil, or the More Effective Evil?
By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor and a state committee member in the Georgia Green Party

Of course, Bruce Dixon is writing for a national audience. In my opinion the most important mission of the California Green Party is to build an independent progressive force at the state and local level -- especially in the One-Party Democratic coastal cities.

What we need for inner-city Los Angeles campaigns are the services of a graphics artist to produce a similar graphic substituting images for Governor Jerry Brown, Senator Diane Feinstein, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for the image of President Obama.

See sample images of the California Democratic Party Hacks:

_{Governor Jerry Brown}

_{Senator Diane Feinstein}

_{Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa}

If you can help me. Please leave a comment here or e-mail me directly at:
AlexCathy@aol.com.

2 Cal Democrat Scandals - Why Have a Green Party?

2011-09-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

Consider the Los Angeles Times front page below. Not one, but two major scandals rocked the California Democratic Party in the same week.

UPDATE: SCROLL DOWN TO SEE LIST OF DURKEE CAMPAIGNS

Both scandals involve big bucks from the Democrats' fat cat campaign donors. Moreover, the scandal of the bankrupt Solyndra solar energy company helps retro Republicans attack Green Energy.

Thanks a lot Democrats. Why have a Green Party? Tell me again how we don't need Greens, Peace & Freedom, Libertarians, and the A.I.P. because we have this great "choice" between "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans.

Published by The Los Angeles Times
Audits Detailed Mishandling of Campaign Funds
By Abby Sewell

When state Sen. Ted Lieu (D- Torrance) learned a few months ago that a state audit had found irregularities in his campaign finances, staffers immediately called Lieu's longtime treasurer, Kinde Durkee.

Durkee assured them that everything was fine, Lieu said, and he took her word for it. He forgot about the incident until this month, when Durkee was arrested in a sweeping federal fraud case that is sending shock waves across the Democratic Party establishment.

Durkee is accused of stealing perhaps millions of dollars from her clients, who include dozens of prominent California Democrats. Authorities have not laid out the full scale of the alleged crime, but clients including Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Los Angeles) have said that that they believe Durkee wiped out their campaign funds. Feinstein announced Friday that she plans to put $5 million of her own money into her reelection campaign to make up for funds that may have been taken.
. . .
"Politics in both parties is an old boys and old girls club, and most of the candidates … figure if everyone else is using Durkee, she must be all right," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "If you were the only campaign thinking about hiring a person with this record, you might think twice about it, but there's safety in numbers."

In Lieu's case, an audit by the State Franchise Tax Board found that $186,190 in credit card contributions to his unsuccessful 2010 race for attorney general had not been deposited in the campaign bank account, in some cases for well over a year. An additional $161,964 that was reported as having been transferred from Lieu's Assembly committee to his attorney general campaign in December 2008 was not deposited until two years later.
. . .

And This

Published by The Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2011
Solar Firm's Obama Links Probed

By Matea Gold and Stuart Pfeifer

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles—
The White House faced mounting political complications as a second top fundraiser for President Obama was linked to a federal loan guarantee program that backed a now-bankrupt Silicon Valley solar energy company, and as two California lawmakers called for investigations of a state tax break granted to the firm.

Steve Spinner, who helped monitor the Energy Department's issuance of $25 billion in government loan guarantees to renewable energy projects, was one of Obama's top fundraisers in 2008 and is raising money for the president's 2012 reelection campaign.

Spinner did not have any role in the selection of applicants for the loan program and, in fact, was recused from the decision to grant a $535-million loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc. because his wife's law firm represented the company, administration officials said Friday.

But Spinner's role as a top official in the Energy Department program, which had not been previously revealed, is likely to spur new inquiries into whether political influence played a role in the handling of the "green" energy fund. Solyndra faces a congressional probe, a criminal investigation and separate internal inquiries at the Energy and Treasury departments.

. . .

The largest investments in Solyndra were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, another major fundraiser for Obama in 2008. Kaiser has denied personally investing in the solar energy company or talking to White House officials about the loan.

Some Republicans in Congress charge that the White House pushed to get the loan approved for political reasons, which the White House denies.

Before its collapse, Solyndra was a showcase of the White House initiative to develop clean-energy alternatives. Obama visited the factory in May and praised Solyndra as a green technology company that would create jobs and help lead the country's economic recovery.
. . .

The point is this. Even when so-called liberal Democrats in California want to do the right thing, such as promote alternative green energy, the implementation is all wrong. They just cannot help turning it into something that can feed the Democratic Party Machines and its rich campaign contributors.

It is instructive that one of the Democrats biggest campaign contributors is billionaire George Kaiser, with a direct interest in the national healthcare debate. Our Green Party candidates in Assembly District 53 strongly advocated universal, single-payer heathcare. But they didn't have to get permission slips from fat cat campaign contributors.

UPDATE: LIST OF DURKEE CAMPAIGNS

Posted on the Web Site for the Sacramento Bee, September 4, 2011
'I've been robbed,' California Lawmaker Says
By Dan Smith

See a list of all the state campaign committee reports Durkee filed in 2011, according to Secretary of State's office data.

KindeDurkee

Cluelessness and Courage in AD 53

Democrat Ted Lieu in 2006

No Taxes! No Worries! Be Happy!

Green Peter Thottam in 2006

Warning! Tough times are coming!

Green Lisa Green in 2010

Clean Money! Clean Politics! Universal health care!

3D Politics - Why Dem-GOP 'Moderate' Greens Will Fail

2011-09-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

Why register Green? Why leave the Republican and Democratic houses of our fathers? Why not nudge good Republicans and Democrats to "Go Green?" The short answer is the old parties are hung up on old debates between so-called conservatives "on the Right" and so-called liberals "on the Left." to "Go Green" for them is, at best, an afterthought pasted onto their primary one-dimensional pantomime.

See below an Op-Ed by Gernot Wagner grimly warning that while our "action bias" makes us feel good about "doing something" about the environment in small individual gestures, at the end of the day "the planet" will hardly notice.

September 7, 2011
Going Green but Getting Nowhere
By Gernot Wagner

YOU reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.

Good.

Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.

You refuse the plastic bag at the register, believing this one gesture somehow makes a difference, and then carry your takeout meal back to your car for a carbon-emitting trip home.

Say you’re willing to make real sacrifices. Sell your car. Forsake your air-conditioner in the summer, turn down the heat in the winter. Try to become no-impact man. You would, in fact, have no impact on the planet. Americans would continue to emit an average of 20 tons of carbon dioxide a year; Europeans, about 10 tons.

What about going bigger? You are the pope with a billion followers, and let’s say all of them take your advice to heart. If all Catholics decreased their emissions to zero overnight, the planet would surely notice, but pollution would still be rising. Of course, a billion people, whether they’re Catholic or adherents of any other religion or creed, will do no such thing. Two weeks of silence in a Buddhist yoga retreat in the Himalayas with your BlackBerry checked at the door? Sure. An entire life voluntarily lived off the grid? No thanks.

And that focuses only on those who can decrease their emissions. When your average is 20 tons per year, going down to 18 tons is as easy as taking a staycation. But if you are among the four billion on the planet who each emit one ton a year, you have nowhere to go but up.

Leading scientific groups and most climate scientists say we need to decrease global annual greenhouse gas emissions by at least half of current levels by 2050 and much further by the end of the century. And that will still mean rising temperatures and sea levels for generations.

So why bother recycling or riding your bike to the store? Because we all want to do something, anything. Call it “action bias.” But, sadly, individual action does not work. It distracts us from the need for collective action, and it doesn’t add up to enough. Self-interest, not self-sacrifice, is what induces noticeable change. Only the right economic policies will enable us as individuals to be guided by self-interest and still do the right thing for the planet.

Every ton of carbon dioxide pollution causes around $20 of damage to economies, ecosystems and human health. That sum times 20 implies $400 worth of damage per American per year. That’s not damage you’re going to do in the distant future; that’s damage each of us is doing right now. Who pays for it?

We pay as a society. My cross-country flight adds fractions of a penny to everyone else’s cost. That knowledge leads some of us to voluntarily chip in a few bucks to “offset” our emissions. But none of these payments motivate anyone to fly less. It doesn’t lead airlines to switch to more fuel-efficient planes or routes. If anything, airlines by now use voluntary offsets as a marketing ploy to make green-conscious passengers feel better. The result is planetary socialism at its worst: we all pay the price because individuals don’t.

It won’t change until a regulatory system compels us to pay our fair share to limit pollution accordingly. Limit, of course, is code for “cap and trade,” the system that helped phase out lead in gasoline in the 1980s, slashed acid rain pollution in the 1990s and is now bringing entire fisheries back from the brink. “Cap and trade” for carbon is beginning to decrease carbon pollution in Europe, and similar models are slated to do the same from California to China.

Alas, this approach has been declared dead in Washington, ironically by self-styled free-marketers. Another solution, a carbon tax, is also off the table because, well, it’s a tax.

Never mind that markets are truly free only when everyone pays the full price for his or her actions. Anything else is socialism. The reality is that we cannot overcome the global threats posed by greenhouse gases without speaking the ultimate inconvenient truth: getting people excited about making individual environmental sacrifices is doomed to fail.

High school science tells us that global warming is real. And economics teaches us that humanity must have the right incentives if it is to stop this terrible trend.

Don’t stop recycling. Don’t stop buying local. But add mastering some basic economics to your to-do list. Our future will be largely determined by our ability to admit the need to end planetary socialism. That’s the most fundamental of economics lessons and one any serious environmentalist ought to heed.

Think about it. As I write this Republicans are saying we can gain "energy independence" by drilling for more oil. Democrats are saying we can create new jobs by spending more money on "infrastructure" (read: highways, bridges, tunnels, and big buildings in the cities). In California both parties promise to "restore the California Dream" -- a way of life based on cheap land, cheap energy, and cheap water. Finally, notice how even in this essay Gernot Wagner, like the good all-American boy that he is, cannot resist framing the debate by genuflecting to the notion: "free market" capitalism good; "socialism" bad.

3D Politics - Die Grünen

2011-09-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: GERMAN GREENS GAIN IN ANOTHER STATE ELECTION -- Parties on the German left prevailed in a regional election in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday... Perhaps the biggest winner of the day was the Green Party, which won 8.5 percent of the vote, more than double the 3.4 percent it received in 2006. See("State Election Adds to Gains by Social Democrats in Germany", The New York Times, September 4, 2011)

The United States may be stuck on stupid with our ridiculous permanent presidential campaign between so-called conservative Republicans and so-called liberal Democrats, but everywhere else Green Parties are on the move. The Alliance 90/The Greens party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) in Germany is the world's strongest Green Party. Founded in 1980 and merging in 1993 with the civil rights movement Bündnis 90 of the former German Democratic Republic (a.k.a. East Germany), Greens have been represented in the German Bundestag for nearly thirty years. In our time of global crisis, even the old gray New York Times has at last grudgingly admitted that Greens are on the move in disparate countries like Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Colombia, and Sweden.

_{Screen shot from a web site for the German Greens}

I am reposting the article from the NYT because it is a perfect follow-up to my earlier post on 3D politics.

Published in The New York Times, September 1, 2011
Greens Gain in Germany, and the World Takes Notice
By Nicholas Kulish

BERLIN — A string of Green Party victories and strong electoral showings across Germany, from the conservative south to the port cities of the north, are helping to redefine politics among voters who are increasingly losing faith in the more established parties.

The Green Party is poised to extend its march into the mainstream on Sunday when voters go to the polls in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The Greens could, for the first time, win seats in the State Parliament and demonstrate their ability to sustain political momentum.

"Nothing in our political science books has prepared us for this kind of party," said Josef Joffe, publisher of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, who noted that the Greens have won the culture war on the left over the rusty Social Democrats on issues like gay rights and the integration of immigrants. "I bet if you had a party like this in America, all my rich friends on both coasts would vote for it."

Although their roots are on the left, the Greens are being increasingly embraced by voters on the right, successfully tapping into a German strain of conservationist conservatism by opposing highways and the demolition of old buildings. It has benefited both from the slow collapse of European socialism and the rising awareness of renewable technologies that have brought even once-skeptical businesspeople into the fold.

With this potent coalition of voters, the Greens surprised Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party when it took control of the affluent southern state of Baden-Württemberg this spring, which is akin to capturing the Texas statehouse. In the process, the party proved it was a force to be reckoned with in German politics, where one in five voters now say they support the Greens.

The German Greens also have served as the spearhead of a global coming out for other Green parties. In Brazil’s presidential election last year, the Green Party candidate won nearly 20 million votes to place third in the first round. The Green Party in Colombia was founded just two years ago, but in 2010 saw its candidate for president place second.

Britain’s House of Commons welcomed its first Green Party member after last year’s election, and Australia’s Greens won their first seat in the lower house in 2010. More significantly, the Greens hold nine out of 76 seats in the Australian Senate, giving the party a swing vote and powerful leverage over legislation in the upper house, where no party holds a majority.

The global surge has remained under the radar in the United States, for many reasons. In a system dominated by two parties, the Greens have no representatives in Congress or, for that matter, in a single state legislature. The party’s image and electoral success in the United States has been tightly bound to the ultimately doomed presidential bids of Ralph Nader rather than depending on the grass-roots methods used to build the Greens in Germany. The German Greens even have their own local chapter in Washington, and they have served as a model for their political cousins abroad.

Gustav Fridolin, one of two leaders of the Swedish Green Party, said he kept a poster from the German Greens’ 2009 parliamentary campaign in his office as inspiration. It reads, "Jobs, jobs, jobs: Only Green helps escape the crisis."

"That important step away from the idea of threatening jobs, threatening development, has been taken in Germany," Mr. Fridolin said in a recent interview. "The party is a more interesting alternative for larger groups in society, not just for people studying environmental policy at university."

The mass killings in Norway in July riveted attention on the strength of right-wing populist parties across Europe, but particularly in Scandinavia. Yet with far fewer headlines, the Green Party in Sweden won more votes in last year’s parliamentary election than the far-right Sweden Democrats, taking 7.3 percent of the vote compared with 5.7 percent for the nationalists.

In Germany, the question is now whether the Greens sustain, or even build, on their recent advances. The party was buoyed by outrage over the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, but it has fallen slightly in polls since. Still, the party could serve as a model for the postindustrial left in Europe and, perhaps, around the world.

It is a long way from the German party’s founding in 1980, when middle-class voters saw the Greens as radicals, heirs to the 1968 student protest movement or even the left-wing terrorists of the Red Army Faction. "People spat on my father when he went door to door," said Milena Oschmann, the daughter of leading party members in the city of Kiel, Germany. She now works for the party, splitting her time between Parliament and the local office in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood.

Ms. Oschmann, 27, described how the party had played host in Berlin to visiting Greens from Greece, Taiwan and Japan as well as Sweden and Australia. In her sports jacket and ballet slippers, a Sony Vaio laptop balanced on her knees during a local meeting in Neukölln, Ms. Oschmann would be right at home on Capitol Hill. She studied politics in Bremen, Germany, and in London before moving to Berlin, a representative of the new generation of Green politicians who have left the beard-and-sandals stereotype behind.

While the Fukushima disaster is often credited with helping the Greens’ surge in Germany, their initial jolt in support in Baden-Württemberg came from the party’s opposition to a multibillion-dollar rail project known as Stuttgart 21 that involved tearing down portions of an old station and downing hundreds of old trees. “They’re covering both sides of the street, serving the deep conservative instincts of Germany for no change,” said Mr. Joffe, the newspaper publisher. “Protecting nature, slowing down growth, slowing down industrialization, is actually a conservative agenda.”

In most reliable scientific opinion surveys, the Greens are polling around 20 percent of the vote, nearly twice the 10.7 percent of the votes they won in the 2009 parliamentary election.

"In former times I always said the Green Party is the party of dentists’ wives," said Reinhard Schlinkert, one of the most established political pollsters in Germany. "Now many of the dentists have started voting for them."

But polls are not votes, and opinions can be fickle. The Greens surprised the political establishment by polling ahead of the center-left Social Democrats in some surveys this past spring — and appeared poised to win the Berlin mayoral race, one of the top prizes of German politics. But as the nuclear crisis receded, attention turned to whether they had the personnel and policy credentials to govern a big state like Baden-Württemberg.

"Once you’re No. 1, you’re in charge of everything," Cem Özdemir, one of the party’s two national leaders, said in an interview recently, "and you’re held accountable."

More on Bündnis 90/Die Grünen:

A green political party in Germany, formed from the merger of the German Green Party and Alliance 90 in 1993. Its leaders are Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir. In the 2009 federal elections, the party won 10.7% of the votes and 68 out of 622 seats in the Bundestag.

January 13, 1980 - Foundation congress

In the 1970s, environmentalists and peace activists politically organised amongst thousands of action groups. The political party The Greens (German: Die Grünen) was founded January 13, 1980 in Karlsruhe to give this movement political and parliamentary representation. Opposition to pollution, use of nuclear power, NATO military action, and certain aspects of industrialised society were principal campaign issues. The Greens originated from civil initiatives, new social movements of the protests of 1968, but also from the conservative spectrum. Important figures in the first years were – among others – Joschka Fischer, Antje Vollmer, Petra Kelly, Rudi Dutschke, Undine von Blottnitz[1] and Herbert Gruhl.

_{Milena Oschmann, right, campaigned for the party last month in Berlin. She said Greens from Greece and Japan had visited to study the Germans' success.}

Four Pillars:

Ecological wisdom
Grassroots democracy
Nonviolence
Social justice

English Language Web Site:

http://www.gruene-bundestag.de/cms/english/rubrik/12/12034.english.html

3D Politics - 'Political Compass' and Beyond

2011-08-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Green Friends,

Scott McLarty, Green Party U.S. Media Coordinator, posted a Facebook link to an interactive web site known as Political Compass. According to Scott, the site returned these scores based on his reply to a battery of multiple choice questions: "Economic Left/Right: -7.12; Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.05, which places me in the lower left corner of the chart (slightly more libertarian than left)."

I was not surprised Scott's results were similar to mine. People at Political Compass strongly believe the old one-dimensional "Left vs Right" model for describing political parties is obsolete. They believe the model should include a "Libertarian vs. Authoritarian" dimension with four quarants for "Libertarian Left", "Libertarian Right", "Authoritarian Left", and "Authoritarian Right." Hence, the depiction of the 2008 presidential candidates posted on the TrèsSugar Web Site.

I agree. Indeed, I'd go further for two reasons.

First, the conflict between so-called conservative Republicans and so-called liberal Democrats in the U.S. doesn't even make sense along the old "Left-Right" dimension, since both are clustered in the "Authoritarian Right" quadrant. The only difference is demagoguery. Republicans use Big Government authoritarianism supposedly to serve hard-working, taxpaying, Christian "Whites" in "middle-class" neighborhoods. Democrats use Big Government authoritarianism supposedly to serve that 70% of Californians labeled "minorities" including, allegedly lazy, welfare-dependent, savage "Blacks" like my family and me in the "ghetto."

Second, I am convinced the growing conflict between stand patters for "Gray" industry and innovators for "Green" industry constitutes a third dimension. And it's along this third dimension where the great 21st Century political struggles are forming.

Read more to see the Political Compass test prologue. Check it out, then post a comment.

The irrelevance and divisiveness of the phony debate between so-called conservative Republicans and so-called liberal Democrats is why I plead for Greens, Libertarians, and all other serious independents to quit propping up the One-Party-With-2-Names by framing our dissent with old clichés, slogans, and stereotypes.

Posted on The Political Compass

There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher?

On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

That's about as much as we should tell you for now. After you've responded to the following propositions during the next 3-5 minutes, all will be explained. In each instance, you're asked to choose the response that best describes your feeling: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree or Strongly Agree. At the end of the test, you'll be given the compass, with your own special position on it.

. . .

Click here to start.

Check it out, dear friends. Then post a comment here.

Budgets Don't Balance Themselves

2011-08-22T16:23:00.000-07:00

Public revenues need to be wrapped around their intended function in developing infrastructure. Taxing the rich is a slogan with no substance as to what the revenues will be used for. States, regions and municipalities are enduring budgetary crises, as well as the Federal Government. Investment multiplies capital accumulation. The point for me to focus on is net impact of those public investments. Have public schools gotten better, even before the massive cutbacks? NO. The restructuring of Federal Education funding was initiated by Reagan and GHW Bush. We are talking about changes that have been in effect for 30-40 years!

There needs to be a new context and a prioritization of where funds will go at all levels and a closer look at how to use them most efficiently. Ex. Teacher training in California has not demonstrated the capability to address the unique educational needs of the student population resulting from the demographic changes in the state. But, there is nothing inherent about the ability of oil royalties, that I support, that will address this.

Oil royalties could be used for energy R&D to move beyond the scenarios presented of windmills on every home. Unpleasant options such as desal for water and natural gas can raise the quantity of new supplies needed there. Tuition increases at state colleges and universities may be hard for all of us, but the stuff doesn't grow on trees. Am always willing to hear of better options. Changing PROP 13 is one for California. Public funds loaned to state infrastructure banks another possible recourse for the future. No Rachel Maddow, that doesn't mean we build Hoover Dams or expect that such projects will demonstrate our national greatness. Yes, Ron Paul the expense of U.S. militarism has caught up to us.

How to be lean, without being mean.There will be NO gain without pain somewhere. The tough nut to crack. Help me here people. It's a long and tortuous road ahead of us.

How Environmental Protection Really Works

2011-08-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

Anyone who thinks that Environmental Protection agencies will really protect us as citizens should read Ken Ward Jr.'s most recent post on the Bee Tree public hearing: Does WVDEP listen to coalfield citizens about mountaintop removal mining?

Ward is an outstanding journalist and tell things like they are, not like you may want to hear them.

Dianne Bady with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition was asking O’Brien about whether the pillars holding up the roof in underground mines beneath the impoundment basin were strong enough — or whether they might crumble and damage the basin.

“You need to get your facts right,” O’Brien told Bady, shaking his head at her.

I was kind of surprised by O’Brien’s response, so I asked him: Are the pillars strong enough? What’s been done to test them? How are they being monitored?

Turns out that O’Brien, who works in WVDEP’s Office of Explosives and Blasting, was the one who didn’t have his facts right. He didn’t know the answers to my questions, even though he’d just chastised a citizen and environmental activist for asking those same questions.

This is just one more example of how the agencies that are supposed to regulate industry end up regulating the public perception of the industry instead. It is not always easy because everyone want to make sure that they get heard and so tend to speak louder. Ward notes:

Public hearings are a challenge, especially on issues that appear as divisive as mountaintop removal and when both sides are often gearing up to use the hearing more to get their message out to a larger media audience and less to actually provide meaningful input on the permit decision at hand.

You might ask what this has to do with California? Just follow any of the meetings, hearing on CA Water and you get the same effects. In both cases, we need more citizen involvement, let's call it grassroots democracy, not less.

Sustainable Growth is No Longer Feasible

2011-08-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

This the latest in my columns from the Morgan Hill Times.

Last week's Times showed us two reasons that we need to be concerned about growth. One was the Times editorial focusing on the fact that there are so many housing allotments that have been awarded, but not built. The other was the fact that the Morgan Hill Unified School District is losing rather than gaining students. The combination illustrates two of the pitfalls in planning for growth.

Like any community, Morgan Hill would love to be able to digest population growth like a leisurely dinner with friends, filling allotted slots each year. We are told that builders are not using their allocations for economic reasons, that they can not afford to build homes when credit is not available or the foreclosures have made the current stock of housing more affordable.

Even if the rate of housing growth were constant, it still does not guarantee schools will be able to plan accordingly. There are, again, more options for families. Some will send their children to private schools. Other families will choose not to have as many children, a seemingly wise choice when the economy is no longer predictable.

Our president hardly opens his mouth without mentioning the need to grow jobs. In that, his detractors, both Republican and Democratic, seem to agree. But the supply of jobs is not growing in the US. Even in California where one would expect innovation to create new jobs faster than we can fill the old ones, unemployment remains higher than 10 percent and in neighboring San Benito County, it is higher than 20 percent.

Maybe it is time to stop and ask ourselves whether the historical rates of growth are really possible. Increasingly, we are seeing events that fall outside the expected range if one's only reference is the historical record. Considering climate, the current drought and heat dome that has engulfed Texas is unprecedented and nearly unbearable. The analysis provided by the Texas State Climatologist shows that the 2011 drought is clearly outside the range of normal event. It may be enough to change the way that people think about living in Texas, about the quality of life there, and that will surely affect growth and the finances of local government.

For growth to continue, we need to be able to provide physical material to support it. But since the Earth is a finite source of everything, it may not always be possible. The list of things currently, or soon to be, in short supply seems to get longer every day. Lithium for new batteries is limited currently to just two major mining sources. The rare earth materials used in our increasingly innovative electronics are currently 80 percent sourced from China and the only other known major source requires deep seabed mining technology to be developed.

Californians know that fresh water is in limited supply. And for energy, we have to consider that the supplies of both oil and coal have peaked while a recent analysis of well head data shows that the supplies of natural gas that have been so abundantly advertised have also been overestimated by 100 percent. Some have even made the case that we have already passed the peak of uranium production with a corresponding increase in the costs of nuclear power.

Any one of these limits could have a major negative effect on our economy. In particular, the costs of energy production are increasing. We have gotten to all of the easy oil, coal and natural gas while we seem unable to fully endorse the replacement from renewable sources. Taken together, these physical world realities also place limits on economic growth, if not now, then in the not to distant future. There is a special term for investments that can only return value by securing new investments. It is called a Ponzi Scheme. The same term could be applied to the idea that we can sustain perpetual economic growth.

It no longer makes sense for any political entity to base fiscal policies on the assumption that current spending can be paid for by future growth. We can see what this has done for the national economy and we are paying for the cost by shedding jobs and a Congressional Circus to distract us from reality. We can see what this has done for the State of California where we take the money from education. The problem we have to solve locally is how to provide for a slowly growing population with declining resources. It will require resetting our priorities and developing a new vision of what Morgan Hill needs to be.

Homework for Greens: Critique "California's Water Wars" by Victor Davis Hanson

2011-08-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: Wes Rolley, a onetime Goldwater Republican from Arizona, often says, Greens come by many paths to the Green Party.

Our challenge as Green Party women and men is to find the right words, metaphors, and narratives to apply our key values to our current global problems, especially environmental problems.

I am a Black man who was once a "good Democrat." Today I emphatically reject Barack Obama and partisan Democrats, including inner-city Democrats who look like me. In my insistence on total rejection of all mid-20th Century clichés and slogans of "liberals" and "conservatives" I ask others to do no more than what I try to do myself.

About Victor Davis Hanson -- Military historian and classics professor at Cal State, Fresno. A "Senior Fellow" at the Hoover Institute, he has written essays, editorials, and reviews for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Post, National Review, American Heritage, Policy Review, Commentary, National Review, the Wilson Quarterly, the Weekly Standard, Daily Telegraph, the Washington Times, and City Journal.

See below Hanson's analysis of California's "water wars" published in the influential Sunday Los Angeles Times. Here's my Homework for Greens: critique Hanson's analysis and post comments applying the 10 Key Values of the Green Party.

Published by The Los Angeles Times, Sunday, August 7, 2011 California's Water Wars
By Victor Davis Hanson

California's water wars aren't about scarcity. Even with 37 million people and the nation's most irrigation-intensive agriculture, the state usually has enough water for both people and crops, thanks to the brilliant hydrological engineering of past Californians. But now there is a new element in the century-old water calculus: a demand that the state's inland waters flow as pristinely as they supposedly did before the age of dams, reservoirs and canals. Only that way can California's rivers, descending from their mountain origins, reach the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta year-round. Only that way, environmentalists say, can a 3-inch delta fish be saved and salmon runs from the Pacific to the interior restored.

Such green dreams are not new to California politics. But their consequences, in this case, have been particularly dire: rich farmland idled, workers laid off and massive tax revenues forfeited.

You can learn an important fact about the water wars simply by driving the width of California's vast Central Valley, home to a large chunk of the state's $14-billion farm export business. What the drive teaches you is that there is no single Central Valley agriculture. Rather, the state is divided longitudinally, right down its middle, into two farming landscapes. These regions — the east and west sides of the Central Valley — differ not only in the crops they grow but also in the availability of water.

Start with the east side, which looks like a verdant, well-tended park from the air, thanks to the Sierra Nevada, which each spring sends copious snowmelt into the rivers that flow into the Central Valley.

Proximity to this guaranteed runoff from the Sierra explains why the east side's small towns favored permanent orchards and vineyards, which represented more than a single year's investment, rather than annual row crops, beef and dairy. In the early 20th century, power companies and the state improved on what nature had bestowed, tapping the massive snow runoff with an ingenious system of dams and gravity-fed canals that channeled the stored water to farmland below.

To this day, gravity-fed irrigation usually supplies the east side with enough summer runoff for its crops. But in rare drought seasons, farmers have a second resource: an enormous aquifer, originally perhaps as large as a billion acre-feet, with a water table close to the surface. The water is good and the cost of pumping cheap.

The far larger, far more fragile west side of the valley is a different story. It is too distant from the Sierra to easily tap much of the snow runoff. And the water table can be more than 1,000 feet underground.

Until the 1960s, this vast interior land was sparsely populated, mostly unfarmed and owned by large ranching concerns. But then the federal and state governments, in a series of complex partnerships, built the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project — sprawling networks of dams, pumping stations and canals sending water from the north more than 400 miles south. Once west side farmland was brought into irrigated production, it proved to be some of the world's most fertile, and a multibillion-dollar farming industry was born from desert.

That industry, however, was dominated by massive corporate and family-held operations. Even as they found ways to produce an ever-greater variety of crops, they came under attack, particularly from California's vocal left, which harped that taxpayers were subsidizing corporate farming — that the $130 and more that farmers were charged per acre-foot of water represented far less than it cost to build and maintain the irrigation system. More recently, environmentalists have argued that diversion of the northern rivers degraded the ecology of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

In late summer 2007, a federal judge in Fresno ruled in favor of an environmentalist lawsuit demanding that the government curtail water deliveries to the west side 80% and more. The suit involved salmon and the 3-inch delta smelt. The number of smelt in the delta had plummeted over the years, the environmentalists claimed, because water projects had diverted too much northern water. The solution, they argued, was to shut down the irrigation pumps.

So, in 2008 and 2009, water deliveries to farmers were drastically reduced. Chaos followed. Thousands of acres of crops were idled. Farmworkers were laid off. In some cases, newly developed orchards and vineyards on the west side died — often near the frequently traveled I-5, where thousands of passing motorists daily saw dead trees and signs erected by angry landowners proclaiming a man-made dust bowl.

Farmers are resourceful people. Some were able to switch to drought-resistant crops; others had reserves to pay the exorbitant costs of pumping scarce groundwater. Still others purchased irrigation supplements from east side canals. A variety of factors, including spiraling agricultural prices, helped them hang on, and in the winter of 2009 they got a lucky break: California entered one of its periodic wet cycles. The result is that, though the state certainly lost hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural revenue, California will probably still export a record $14 billion in farm commodities in 2011.

At the end of my frequent drives across the state, I generally descend into the environmentalists' stronghold, the San Francisco Bay Area. Here, particularly at Stanford University and UC Berkeley, much of the environmental research and ideological advocacy took place that put the salmon and the smelt ahead of agribusiness.

California lakes and canals are a testament to our fathers' using nature to bring water, power and prosperity to the Central Valley. The state's visionary engineers and politicians saw the massive federal west side irrigation projects as the logical 20th century successors to smaller state and local enterprises that had irrigated the east side in the 19th century. But today, coastal scientists have tired of such visions. They consider them destroyers of nature, not catalysts of wealth, so they use their academic expertise to thwart them.

The smelt and the salmon are now back in court, thanks to a hypothesis that Bay Area wastewater, not just river diversions and massive delta pumps, is also to blame for their still diminished numbers. U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger has approved a temporary compromise that tries, in wet years like this one, to grant farmers up to 85% of their contracted water deliveries. The deal has made environmentalists happy, since it keeps the rivers flowing to the sea. The farmers are less happy, reasoning that if they're getting little more than three-quarters of their deliveries during one of the wettest seasons on record, they'll surely receive even less in the inevitable drier years to come.

But in today's California — with vast Democratic majorities in the Legislature, statewide officeholders mostly Democratic, and a delegation to Congress that's also largely Democratic — there is almost no chance of restoration of the original 100% delivery contracts, no matter what weather the future brings. When the wet cycle passes, thousands of acres on the west side of the Central Valley will again become idle until Californians accept that unused farmland is a luxury that a struggling state can no longer afford.

Obama's Pig in a Poke

2011-08-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

I am not in favor of the Tea Party but there is no purpose in using untruths to argue with them, as it only weakens your own argument when the truth is revealed. one thing we can say is that we have seen the significance of a swing vote. It is not a "hostage crisis". It is a brilliant political tactic that is legal and effective.

As far as defaults go, all lenders have the capacity to accelerate the payments on their loans and demand payment in full. THAT is a default. Giving the U.S. a 'D' rating is a default. Going from AAA to AA is a lowering of the credit rating. Lenders of consumer loans also have the option of accepting payments on the interest to move the account due date forward. People with auto loans often have paid the interest for a month to avoid a more serious delinquency status. Some financial institutions also have the option of moving the payment date forward into the next month. Anyone who pays late consistently loses their excellent credit standing that goes on the credit report. Past payment records impact on future interest rates and may discourage future lenders from approving new loans to higher risk borrowers. Sovereign debt rates have their own criteria but the principle is the same. The more the risk of the lender failing to repay in a timely and consisent manner, the worse the credit score. The credit rating is the result of an extended spending spree and a recent drop in income (revenues).

The drop in rating to AA is not a default. It is a grounding to establish real priorities and not try to prop up the failing urban economies dominated by the Democratic Urban Machines. What's on the plate now? Population growth has exacerbated the capacity of all institutions in the U.S. to function effectively. Too many, too fast. Resources have been taxed to the max. State budgets have been depleted and expenditures have accomplished little while states tread water with the number and severity of the increased demands on all systems.

Greens will lose the respect of voters if appear to be deliberately antagonizing and provoking the situation with rants about "wars on working people" which are straight out of a movement long since receded.. The political process is what it is and has many flaws. The American people do get the government they deserve. The responsibility of elected leaders is to work within that process to address the input of the American people as best they can. As someone who has been unemployed for months I do not accept the rhetoric of any talk show on the radio or TV at face value. I do suggest that we get over the fact that the Tea Party exists. For people who rarely invoke religion in political discussions, there is way too much preaching about the Tea Party being the anti-Christ for my taste.

This is a fiscal crisis and the Fed has taken actions to date with a monetary policy of flooding the economy with Obama dollars. The object is to prevent any increase in interest rates. The market is falling in response to Obama's "solution". This should be taken as feedback. T-notes are being scooped up, as higher interest rates are sure to result. As far as energy plans go- T. Boone has it right. As far as infrastructure goes- the infrastructure banks need to be developed in the states, not by the Federal government. Defense cuts have become modified pork and are long overdue to face the axe. The double dip has come in through the front door. Localization needs to produce sound policies that address the real economy and shift the political center to the center, the Green center.

Whatever it takes

2011-07-21T14:50:00.000-07:00

I have spent time this week browsing through the essays in the book Moral Ground Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril. Browsing is a word chosen carefully as I can not really plow straight through a book of 80 plus essays focused on providing an answer to the same question: Do we have a moral obligation to take action to protect the future of a planet in peril? Obviously they all answer with an emphatic YES or there would be no reason to publish such a collection.

While there are many ways to say Yes.. almost like dialects of a common language, I would pick on two particular items to make my point. One by Derrick Jensen and the other by Barack Obama.

Jensen's vision is one of the darkest that I have read. He begins by asking a very different question: "Do you believe that this culture will undergo a voluntary transition to a sane and sustainable way of living?" He finds no indication that such a positive future is in store for us. Most of us who consider ourselves Green, or admit to being an "enviro" all know the word to the litany, we make our daily bended knee, but that is about it. Jensen demands more.

Those who come after -- presuming anyone survives -- are going to wonder what the fuck was wrong with us that we didn't do whatever it takes -- and I mean whatever it takes-- to stop industrial capitalism from killing the planet."

At the same time, Barack Obama's contribution is to describe "The Future I Want for my Daughters." This is not even his real work, but seems to be pulled together from three different sources, each footnoted and all attributed to Senator Barack Obama.

We can turn this crisis of global warming into a moment of opportunity for innovation, and job creation, and an incentive for businesses that will serve as a model for the world. Let's be the generation that makes future generations proud of what we diud here. The time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we own past and future generations.

It is pretty clear that Obama and Jensen do not inhabit the same world. According to Jensen;

When most people in this culture ask, "How can we stop global warming?" that's not really what they're asking. They're asking "How can we stop global warming, without significantly changing this lifestyle [or deatstyle,, as some call it] that is causing global warming in the first place?"

The answer is that you can't.

So, let me post the future's question to now President Obama. "What the fuck is wrong with you that you are not doing whatever it takes to save a planet in peril."

I received an invitation to join in a protest against Canadian / US Tar Sands projects, especially the building of a long pipeline to carry Albert Tar Sands Crude to US refineries. The asked us to dig out Obama Buttons, if we had them from 2008, and to wear them. Given that Obama has backed this project, and is obviously NOT willing to "do whatever it takes" then it seems that the protest will turn out to be just another of those environmental feel good happenings. The only real reason to have anyone bring an Obama button is to gather them all and ship them to the white house... collect.

At some point, our progressive friend will learn that one part of "whatever it takes" is to divorce themselves from the idea that salvation lies with the Democratic Party.

California Water War: The Diversions are a Diversion

2011-07-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

The California Water War has faced its Fort Sumter. The recent introduction of a secession bill in the California State Legislature has revealed the profound character of the division between water users in the state. Coming as it did after the battle of the peripheral canal being fought to a stalemate; it is overdue that we begin to focus on peace talks in Sacramento. We see in this battle all the indicators of a protracted war as were demonstrated after the first battle of Bull Run. But, let’s avoid too much literary license in the comparison with the Civil War.

The issue is water appropriation, or more precisely water diversions. It has been a long time policy for the state of California to seize control of the water resource through various measures including defining in stream flow as a beneficial use, invoking the Public Trust Doctrine, building massive projects to transfer huge amounts of water from one region to another and failing to utilize sources other than freshwater supplies to address regional resource needs. The question is “Where the balance is in this picture?” Or more precisely “Why is there no rational state water policy that establishes consistency in water planning?”

The only consistency to date has been in the willingness to try and placate movers and shakers at the expense of the marginalized. When Arnold Schwarzenegger claimed that “we can have it all” in California water, he clearly misrepresented the current state of affairs. Who is “we” when some of “us” just had our supplies taken from us and when does “all” include what had been “mine” and I still need? What is fair and just about that? How can we (and you) have it all (including what was taken from me and given to him)?

What is seen is that the scale, scope and impacts of the projected uses and allocations are far beyond the realm of accurate quantification. It becomes much too easy for “combat science” to take the place of accurate science in arguing the case for yet another diversion. What is also seen is that the issue of sustainability is twisted to the point that it is no longer recognized as a functioning tool in policy making. As a Green I am unequivocally committed to the integration of human habitation with the world around us. But, never have I seen or heard of the number and scale of diversions as have been proliferated in this state. Never have I seen a more conflated mishmash of water law that makes regional management so profoundly complicated. Never have I seen a state legislature so intimately involved in water administration.

Regional efforts have produced substantive proposals and established goals based on their regional circumstances such as the Santa Cruz report CONSERVATION BLUEPRINT: AN ASSESMENT AND RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE LAND TRUST OF SANTA CRUZ. The report initially characterized the region’s challenges as follows: "Our water supplies are not sufficient to meet long-term residential and agricultural demand." "Water shortages and pollution, habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change, and threats to the viability of local agriculture, are among the many conservation challenges that we must continue to address in the 21st century." But, they are able to establish a proposed set of water objectives: “Water Resources: 1. Protect water supplies to ensure long-term drinking water availability and to meet the needs of local industry, agriculture, and the natural environment. 2. Protect and enhance water quality in natural, urban, and agricultural landscapes. 3. Maintain watershed integrity and ensure resilience to climate change. “pg. xiv.

The recent report from Stanford provides a plethora of examples of regional groundwater management in the state with various models for others. Likewise a recent publication, REGIONAL PLANNING IN AMERICA: PRACTICE AND PROSPECT of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policies provides other models of regional planning from across the nation. It is clear that things are happening at the regional levels in land and water planning. And it is clear that the incentives for regions to prioritize their own plans for land and water use have increased as population continues to grow. What is equally clear is that the presumptive diversions of water by the state of California and the State Legislature in water continue to preclude a sound and holistic approach by regional entities to land and water planning.

It is clear that the first step in Sacramento is to establish a consistent regional planning template that provides real sustainability in the planning process within watersheds and water basins. It is clear that the war between the regions is avoidable when regions are given the autonomy to be self-reliant. There is no question that this will mean a new meaning for sustainability. But, it is equally clear that only the seeds of conflict lie in maintaining the status quo. A scenario addressing regional long-term planning processes that are open and transparent provides a real alternative.

Groundwater and Secession in california

2011-07-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

Groundwater in California is the focus of the latest water war between water users in the North and users in the South. Some 38% of water used in the state comes from groundwater mining. The battlefield of this war is the Central Valley of California and the Central Valley Aquifer. Norris Hundley estimated California’s groundwater reserves in his book, THE GREAT THIRST p. 527, amounting to 850 million acre-feet, with the caveat that less than half that amount was usable. Running from the Sacramento Valley to the San Joaquin Valley this aquifer circulates roughly 2 million acre feet of water/per year. Withdrawals account for roughly 11.5 million acre ft. /yr. (Data supplied by the USGS: Groundwater Atlas of the United States ). In December 2009 satellite-imaging projected the loss of 30 cubic kilometers of water since 2003. This is creating an unprecedented political struggle in the state of California. Recently a bill was introduced promoting the secession of the Central Valley counties into a new state. http://publicceo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3092:is-california-on-the-verge-of-creating-a-new-state-some-say-yes&catid=151:local-governments-publicceo-exclusive&Itemid=20 The significance of this lies in the polarization that it demonstrates in the state between water users as represented geographically (between North and South) and politically (between Democrats and Republicans). As Greens we should review this situation in an appropriate context and recognize the validity of all people seeking representation of their ecological needs and concerns. It is most revealing that those who drew the map of this new state failed to include Los Angeles and other coastal regions in the south within the new borders.

The recent report of the Public Policy Institute of California, documented the frequent overdraft in the Tulare and Salinas Basins of the Central Valley. The study proposes the end of the overdraft which is causing subsidence and lowering of the water table. The report proposes the need to establish state infrastructure to measure and monitor groundwater. Its review of “A Way Forward" describes the road traveled as: “California’s failure to regulate groundwater has harmed fish and aquatic life in related streams, compromised groundwater quality, generated conflicts among water users, and hindered the development of groundwater banking and water marketing. Comprehensive basin management, which treats groundwater and surface water in an integrated, sustainable manner, is needed to improve economic and environmental performance of California’s water system.” Its description of the road forward proposes “comprehensive basin management”. It is unfortunate that the writers propose such management in order to “facilitate banking and related water transfers”. The idea that we will be able to map out the aquifers and quantify the groundwater resource would seem to be a long way from the current state of the science. I admit this statement is subject to challenge by those with more scientific background than me. The satellite-imaging data may provide such a capacity.

The hydro-political scenario of a California water secessionist movement is the product of a one party rule of California’s urban governing entities. It is the product of unsustainable population growth that neither party wants to address for their own narrow interests. No one benefits, so long as diversions end the argument. Like the budget deficit talks, both parties prefer to just “kick the can down the road”. Neither political party is prepared to address the structural reforms needed to address adaptive governance. Conjunctive management will happen but it will not solve the issues between Delta users and Central Valley users. Why? Because the concerns are different.

Those calling for secession are right. There will be no representation under the status quo. California water is not governable under the existing paradigm. What we are dealing with is a distinct population of millions, who are knowingly disregarded by a one party system. The sick joke is not the legislation to secede. The sick joke is the power monopolized by the urban centers of the state who manipulate government and public opinion. Groundwater is no different from the other aspects of the water resource- whether supply and demand, monitoring and measurement, water quality or establishing priorities. Until we truly govern together, we cannot manage by ourselves.

Atlanta Test Cheating Kills the Canary in the Mine

2011-07-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

The recent exposure of cheating in the Atlanta Public Schools gives me an opportunity to address the issue of public education based on my own personal observations. The issue of massive fraud has characterized urban public schools for some time. My generation went into many urban schools with the attitude of helping the poor and bringing knowledge to those in need. We rarely presumed that the problems in urban schools extended beyond the schools themselves. Since then we certainly have learned better.

The rhetoric of “community leaders” and public officials has continued to obscure the root causes of the failures in the public education system. Unlike the Republicans, I do not give much credence to the Republican claim that teachers’ unions are the blame for school failures. The fact is that they really do not do anything that significantly contributes in any way to teacher job security or professional development. The Democratic argument in regards to funding issues, likewise, doesn’t really address the fundamental flaws in public schools.

What becomes obvious here is that it is the cover-up that reveals the lack of integrity of those caught in its web. The lack of integrity begins with students who refuse to prioritize education in their lives and manipulate the various actors to hold themselves blameless. The lack of integrity continues with parents bullying teachers and administrators with “NOT my Johnny” to cover-up their child’s lack of performance at school. The lack of integrity flows to the teachers who are unwilling to speak publicly in regards to the real issues around discipline and student behavior and their disruption of the education process in the classroom. The lack of integrity appears in the principal’s offices when they seek to put a lid on real issues and work overtime to project an illusion of calm to all. School administrators then play politics with failing schools and leave critical gaps in our children’s education. Federal and state Education officials implement new programs to demonstrate their engagement while failing to delineate the basic responsibilities of the general public in the education process.

The business community has been raising the alarm for some time. They have been dismissed out of hand by public officials seeking to flush the system with cash for their constituents. Business people have noticed it because they can’t find qualified applicants to fit into their job requirements. Politicians use rhetoric and posture as if they were really addressing the substantive issues. Parents point their fingers and yell at school board meetings. Teachers picket the state house to protect their unions and their pension plans as they exist. But no real change is forthcoming.

When schools stop getting tagged, we will know that education has become an important function in the lives of young people. When parents start spending more time with their children with homework, we will know that we are on a road to change. When teachers are able to instruct without the chronic interruptions and violence prevalent in urban public schools, we will know that there will be real change comin’ down the road. Let’s not play games with the future of our state and nation. The canary in the mine was choked to death in the Atlanta Public School system. Let’s skip the drama and get to work on what we all know needs to be done.

At times, neutrality is only a lack of courage.

2011-07-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

If you have followed Martin's excellent series of posts on CA Water, you might wonder what others are trying to do. Surprisingly, the Metropolitan Water District, the largest urban wholesaler in CA has been neutral regarding H.R. 1837, the "San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act".

H.R. 1837 is an effort by the agricultural water districts on the West Side of the Sa Joaquin Valley to ensure that their water is protected, even though they increasingly have to fallow land for other reasons. I refer you to Spreck Rosencran's post at On the Waterfront today. He concludes:

If even a fraction of the provisions in H.R. 1837 pass, the promise of a sustainable ecosystem will be eliminated for all practical purposes. In other words, the BDCP (Bay Delta Conservatiuon Plan)will not be able to protect the Delta and its resources and it will garner little support in many parts of the state.

It’s a curious strategy for urban water agencies to stand by and allow San Joaquin Valley exporters to take a dangerous gamble with such an important segment of the state’s supply for future generations. It is time to stop H.R. 1837 and together develop a solution that works for everybody- farmers, fishermen and urban areas alike.

It does not take much imagination to believe that the Metropolitan is working on their own proposals, including participating in supposed-to-be secret negotiations regarding the financing of a new "conveyance" that would assure their own future supplies. By conveyance I mean either a new peripheral canal around the Delta or a tunnel under it.

The facts of CA water politics are that those most affected: rate payers,the public taxpayers, the residents and daily users of the Delta, are not given a seat at the table. Once the deal is defined, then it is sold to the public so that we are all willing to open out pocketbooks yet again.

Now is perhaps our last opportunity to affect the future of water planning / management in CA, but it won't happen without the exercise of political muscle on a state wide basis.

To Greens care enough to do that?

Water Pricing in a Regional Context

2011-07-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

In Chapter 6 of the report MANAGING CALIFORNIA’S WATER: FROM CONFLICT TO RECONCILIATION published by the Public Policy Institute of California the issue of water pricing is raised as a tool for conservation. From page 270-273 under the title “Water Pricing: an underutilized tool for water conservation” the PPIC report examines the market mechanisms that impact on water demand. The issue of Urban Water Pricing was studied in the 50 year water plan of the Middle Rio Grande under the category of “Urban and Rural Conservation Activities” in Chapter 10: RECOMMENDATIONS and it was evaluated by an independent contractor for technical and physical feasibility in the water plan.

In the context of regional planning, the Middle Rio Grande study provided clarity as to the priority that should be accorded to pricing in the implementation of the plan’s numerous recommendations. In its evaluation of the effect of urban pricing on water demand the study found: “A 100 percent increase in water rates, on average, would decrease total urban water use by 10 percent. Total urban consumptive water use in the MRG planning region is estimated at 84,880 acre-feet in 1995.“ The importance of a technical review of recommendations brought forward from the community is that there is a context that improves the accuracy of measurements. Also, there are specific reasons that stakeholders provide input for the various recommendation proposals that are being addressed. By evaluating all the recommendations ahead of time, people impacted by the implementation of the plan’s recommendations see concretely how each recommendation will impact on their lives and the water resource of their region.

The MANAGING WATER report of the PPIC projects an impact of pricing to increase conservation and believes that state reviews of such water rates would “provide an impartial technical analysis, helping to depoliticize rate-setting and helping utilities to maintain a solid financial footing while encouraging water use reductions”. De-politicizing rate setting is not really an achievable goal and when state administrators are empowered to finance their own bureaucracy there is a great potential for mischief. Actions of administrators can easily devolve into a situation in which our communities have little or no influence on the decisions that are made. Further, until the day comes where California has the infrastructure to accurately measure and monitor surface and groundwater in the state, the reliability of decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate data will also be subject to real questions. We have seen all too often how state decisions on diversions have become highly “politicized” and one region can suffer for the benefit of others.

What we need for pricing is not the draconian increases needed to decrease urban demand. What we need are measures that facilitate a region’s ability to provide revenues for it that it can utilize for infrastructure management and improvement. There is also a need for revenues for research and development of new water supplies. This raises the issue of the potential role of a regional, tiered water severance tax. In the setting of the political decisions on these kinds of issues, water boards need to be established that represent users and stakeholders. Colorado has used a resource severance tax and in 2011 collected $34.68 million from the extraction of natural gas and oil. The debates need to move away from the issue of diversions. There can be no effective regional planning when diversions and importation of water are prioritized in addressing water supplies. There is much to be developed in this concept to make it fair and equitable for water users, whether urban or rural. Its success with oil and gas extraction raises the question of whether the severance tax concept can be an effective source of revenue for regions.

Top 10 Things You Should Know About The Farm Bill | Environmental Working Group

2011-06-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

With all of the discussion discussion in Washington about cutting costs, it is really disgusting that they have not taken the Farm Bill into account. I guess that the fact Representative Ryan is from a farm state makes a difference. The Environmental Working Group has provided a concise list of what we mostly don't know about the cost of our food and why our taxes are so high.

Here is just one item from their list.

1) The farm bill doles out billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to the largest five commodity crops: corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans. Those payments go out, regardless of need, and they mostly fail to help the nation’s real working farm and ranch families. In fact, since 1995, just 10 percent of American farms – the largest and wealthiest operations – have raked in 74 percent of all subsidy payments.

The last time the farm subsidies came up for review, both our Democratic Senators, Feinstein and Boxer, supported the continuation of business as usual. Guess they know which side of the aisle is buttered.

My enemy's enemy is ????

2011-06-25T14:58:00.000-07:00

My first introduction to the politics of the middle east was from the pages ofr a Leon Uris novel. That was not an unbiased source. I was much older before I read Revolt in the Desert by T. E. Lawrence. From that, I got a real understanding of the idea that my enemy's enemy is my friend and how that works in tribal cultures. As I now read what some Progressives are saying about middle easter politics, I think that they too are following that line of reasoning.

The United States has a long history of supporting some very bad people for a similar reason. The name of Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi comes to mind, not to mention Indonesia's Sukarno or Cuba's Fulgencia Batista or Egypt's Mubarak. It is a lesson that we never seem to learn, because, eventually, the stability we seek always breaks down and those we supported can only maintain their position through violent repression of dissent.

One would think that progressives would not make the same mistake, but they seem to always find a way to make heroes out of some very bad people just because they offer opposition to another "enemy". Oh, what evils we perpetuate just to make a powerful friend. Such actions should garner the derision of all Greens. Especially in the Middle East where the perpetuation of power means continues the suppression of the rights of women in many countries, denying them the right to education, the freedome to travel as they please or even to drive a car.

Cynthia McKinney's was applauded by many for taking part in the Gaza flotilla. Her words were definitely anti-Israel, but in the name of peace and the recognition of the rights of the Palestinians.

Her subsequent actions, participating in an Iranian show Conference, issuing press releases that in support of Lybia, have squandered much of any good will she might have gained. Now, I read a post calling for Greens to distance themselves from McKinney. Rather, it seems to me, that in her search for anti-Israel support she has chosen to align herself with the wrong people.

In a search for a possible Presidential candidate for 2012, I hope that Greens realize McKinney has left us, no longer standing up for woman's rights in oppressive societies with dictatorial leadership. Be it Iran, Lybia or Syria, there is little doubt that the Arab Spring will turn into a Winter of our Discontent when seeming progresswives align with the likes of Ahmadinejad, Qadaffi or Asad.

Population and Water Uses

2011-06-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

Agricultural and urban water uses exist side-by-side in any pie graph of water uses for any region. As users address issues of the water resource supplies and demands, the debates focus on one user’s efficiency over the others. When taken out of the regional context, the debate quickly degenerates into accusations where everyone can point at the others for various behaviors that disproportionately impact on efficiency or consumptive uses. When taken within the context of regional uses, it enables everyone to ask: What is important to us all and how do we prioritize our use of limited regional resources?

Often farmers are blamed for raising alfalfa or other high water use crops. Other times they are told by academics or urban advocates how the size (or the business model) of their farms are responsible for corporate domination. Or the type of irrigation used and whether their land has been laser-leveled lies at the root of depleted water supplies. Everyone knows how to farm, just like everyone knows how to teach. When met across a regional planning table, farmers can address the many factors required to maintain a stable business that are beyond the control of them as individuals. It is worth saying here that our agricultural produce supplies have never been tested to the point of famines, as has been seen in nations around the world.

The factor of population is often used to address the issue of water efficiency. Developers and land attorneys actively engaged in the water planning process focus on the efficiency of urban uses without referencing their own financial interests in so doing. Agribusinesses can do so as well. As Greens, sustainability is our own critical factor, but it is NOT an excuse to invite disaster upon the world’s peoples. In regional planning, the discussions incorporate quantity and quality, and necessarily include effective AND efficient water use by our communities and our neighbors. The recent release of the PPIC Report MANAGING CALIFORNIA’S WATER: FROM CONFLICT TO RECONCILIATION has recently been juxtaposed with the release of the report MUNICIPAL DELIVERIES OF COLORADO RIVER BASIN WATER by the Pacific Institute. Both include the impacts of population on urban water use.

Increase in population is inherent in reviewing water management issues and if it is disregarded it is done so at the risk of our well-being. “This population growth has serious implications for food and energy production and urban expansion, all of which will place increasing pressure on available fresh water supplies.” (QUENCHING URBAN THIRST: GROWING CITIES AND THEIR IMPACTS ON FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS, by Thomas W. Fitzhugh and Brian D. Richter, Bioscience, August 2004, Vol. 54, No. 8; page 741). It is worth saying for the uninitiated water advocates that river returns are more often credited to users even when they come from the depletion of underground aquifers, as a result of interstate river compacts. The result of this is that a microchip manufacturer can project an image as highly “efficient” water users in Albuquerque, even while they daily withdraw millions of gallons of water from local users. Rarely, do farmers have water appropriations adjusted when they are returned to surface supplies or when recharged to aquifers by percolation. Municipalities along the Colorado River studied by the Pacific Institute are credited for such return flows. http://www.snwa.com/html/wr_colrvr_credits.html This gives cities a much greener projection than their reality may in fact prove to be and benefits them in the paper water world of accounting.

The use of diversions in California has impacted not only regional supplies, but also impacted on urban water uses. When the water supplies sent to Los Angeles from the Owens River and the Mono basin were reduced, they were “replaced by water from MWD sources, and the city also began to emphasize water conservation”. (QUENCHING URBAN THIRST, p. 744) As Greens, we project a political agenda that planning addresses preservation of the planet’s ecosystems, as well as, the supplies needed in the face of population growth. http://www.cagreens.org/platform/platform_ecology.shtml#water We can certainly agree with the writers of QUENCHING URBAN WATER SUPPLIES when they emphasize: “Thus, it is important that water planners move swiftly to implement ecosystem water allocations before water supplies become overtaxed.” (QUENCHING URBAN THIRST, page 751)

Population growth has often been understated as a contributing factor to diminishing water supplies and reducing Delta water exports. (page 264, PPIC Report) The PPIC report focuses on urban conservation as a critical strategy in reducing urban water use. (see page 265, PPIC Report) Conservation is one technique to lower demand of water for urban regions. It does not address saltwater intrusion. The Pacific Institute Report states: “The total volume of water withdrawn nationwide in 2005 was lower than it was in 1975, despite substantial economic and population growth. This is a significant achievement, demonstrating that water demand can be successfully delinked from growth.” MUNICIPAL DELIVERIES OF COLORADO RIVER BASIN WATER, page 2-3 at http://www.pacinst.org/reports/co_river_municipal_deliveries . Per capita use is one measure of water accounting. It does not measure: impacts on ecosystems, impacts on existing economies of scale, groundwater depletions, carrying capacity of existing water infrastructure, impacts on public services, healthcare and education systems or other consequences of urban sprawl and development. It is unfortunate that the Pacific Institute proposes to encourage public officials to “promote conservation and efficiency” (MUNICIPAL DELIVERIES, page iv.) when, absent an open and transparent regional planning process, the result could very well lead to exacerbation of tensions in regards to water supplies predicted by the Department of the Interior in WATER 2025. http://biodiversity.ca.gov/Meetings/archive/water03/water2025.pdf

Water politics on a statewide level is a continual battle over freshwater supplies between one region and another. Urban users rarely bat an eyelash as water continues to flow from our spigots. But farmers are in crisis every time there is a drought. This political paradigm is manifested in the State Legislature by the partisan divides between Democrats and Republicans. Sustainability will never be brought in to balance the decisions until there is a countervailing force brought into the State Legislature through the elections of Greens. Sustainability is in the interests of all water users, as well as the environment. Regional planning needs to limit diversions and establish concrete objectives in defining sustainable water use by balancing growth with renewable supplies. As a state we will not get there traveling the road that we have chosen to-date. There are better alternatives. We can work together. We can plan together.

California Water Politics: Balancing Growth with Renewable Supplies

2011-06-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

Any study of water management report in the state of California that fails to analyze California water politics leaves a significant gap in grasping the decisions that have been made in the past and those that will be made in the future. In addressing California water politics we find profound disparities in power and influence. There are many advocacy groups that represent users and stakeholders throughout the state who are engaged in issues of water quality, water allocations and water diversions. There are lines drawn between coastal municipalities and inland users. There are lines drawn between North and South. There are environmentalists and agribusinesses that project their ritual oppositions in the media. Liberals in San Francisco raise the banner of the Delta smelt, while conservatives on talk shows mock the prioritization of a minnow-like fish ahead of the farm owners and farm workers of the Central Valley.

The irony is that with all the smoke inherent in these conflicts, how do we ever find the fire of the real interests of users in California? One thing is clear, no one lacks the appropriate science and policy advocates in the public arena to plead their case. Here in California its called "combat science". The real substantive political questions remain obscured by the white noise of the advocacy groups.

The essence of sustainability in water politics is working regionally to integrate the objective: balancing growth with renewable supplies. Defining the common needs and mechanisms to accomplish this is a common objective of our neighbors and friends and not a battlefield of the future. If we can make sacrifices in these decisions, our neighbors can do so as well. If we can establish priorities recognizing our neighbors and surrounding communities’ needs, they can as well. But we need to do with without taking from others. And we need to be cognizant of what it is we are expecting of others.

California has manipulated its water law so that it means all things to all people. Public Trust Doctrine has been used to promote private interests receiving takings from other users as a result of state actions. Beneficial uses are so inclusive as to lack any real meaning in regards to distinguishing consumptive use. In California water law doctrine is inclusive of pueblo rights, riparian, prior appropriation and a separate one for groundwater. Fourteen Federal agencies and 15 state agencies (table 2.10, page 129, PPIC Report) put their hands in the waters of California and local authorities exist in nine distinct jurisdictional governmental entities (ranging from municipalities to flood control, sanitation and water districts).

This is the face of California water management and administration but no where is there a body that presents the distinct voices of regional water users and stakeholders at the same table. No where do neighbors and community people plan their common destiny in regards to the common resource. No where are the particular interests of water users and stakeholders represented AS users and stakeholders within a shared political entity.

The decisions being made within the California State Legislature are NOT the product of the expressions of the concerns and needs of all those impacted by its decisions. The process within the California State Legislature obscures the incorporation of the science and the metrics needed for an accurate assessment of the existing regional uses and supplies of the water resource and/or the impact of the decisions being made on others. The funding mechanisms bear no relation between those benefiting from and those not impacted by the authorizations needed to implement recommendations. As a result, the politics in the State Legislature quickly degenerate into the “art of the deal”.

If we are not talking about talk show polemics or the partisan kabuki fights of FOX vs. MSNBC, what do we mean by water politics? Why are we trying to get out of the current arenas in order to come up with substantive solutions to the issues of water as they impact on our neighbors and our communities?

Other Western states do manage their state water supplies without the reliance on diversions that dominate the California aquascape or dependence on massive state bonds having to be approved. In NM, the Office of the State Engineer recently ruled against a 150 mile diversion Santa Fe from another region on the premise of a regions because it was "vague and overbroad." other states such as Texas and New Mexico manage to withstand the direct confrontations of regional users working together to define their water allocations and establish sound priorities for them.

Substantive issues such as population growth, decline of freshwater resources, and increasing public health concerns need to be addressed where they are taxing the very resources we need to survive on this planet. And they need to be in a scope and scale that they will change the direction that we are currently headed. “The relationship among water, growth and land use is a global problem that will be resolved most effectively at the local and regional level.”

MANAGING CALIFORNIA'S WATER - Breaking from the Past

2011-06-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

It is time for California to realize it is no longer on the cusp of change and that it is no longer the Best of the West. The issue of water management is just one example of California’s inability to forthrightly address significant issues with clarity and decisiveness. The theme of our discussion today seeks to ask the question of all Californians: What is the priority for water use in California: the economy or the environment? Two factors stand evident in the question: One is that regions do not agree on priorities, and two is that there are often situations where the environmental uses are consistent with economic development.

If we are to address the issues of water planning for the future, we need to empower the regions to make their own decisions for their own futures. But we need to stop enabling addictive water uses by diversion and transfers. Texas has regional planning processes that enable their state plan to project their state priorities given their drought. They have compiled statistics on water use in the state that even the PPIC indicates is NOT possible to do in California (see the note under Table 2.2 (page 86 in the MANAGING CALIFORNIA’S WATER PPIC Report). California needs to stop financing mega-projects through state bonds and begin to establish a Trust Fund for water dedicated projects as exists in Colorado. California needs regional planning processes and regional Public Welfare Statements that define their water budgets, establish priority uses and engage stakeholders and users, as was seen in the Middle Rio Grande of New Mexico.

It is not true that we can have it all. But neither is it true that public trust requires regions to divert their water resource to other regions of the state. When people who are not impacted by water allocation decisions get to make them in the State Legislature, you establish a disconnect between government and those being governed. Political partisanship has replaced administrative responsibility for wise use and efficiency. Both rural and urban users in California have increasingly demonstrated greater political leverage and less wisdom in regards to water supplies and uses. Why bother? There are no inputs from competing users. And there are no parameters for uses that bear a real relation to the carrying capacity of the regional water supply.

California has gone past the stage of turning rivers into pipelines and prefers to build aqueducts without ever bothering to recognize the inherent conflict with the concept of sustainability in so doing. As a coastal state this situation is an inherent contradiction. Sustainability is a valid criterion for water management. Sources of supply can be developed on a large scale without competing with the environment. The state of Texas has put on line a desal plant in El Paso in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert and is converting it to solar. The state of Israel is looking to implement desal for 65% of its water supply. The PPIC admits that desal remains “a small proportion of statewide water supplies” (MANAGING CALIFORNIA’S WATER, p. 267). The point is NOT to promote desalination. The point is to propose there are greater sources of supply for regions than simply transfers and diversions. These sources can be defined by the regions themselves.

Precedents have been created that presume the entitlement of particular regions to benefit from the resources of other at great cost. But, one needs to only recall the water war from the Owens Lake diversion to recognize that it has not been done equitably and fairly. It is better to establish new precedents than to rely on the negative experiences of the past.

Economics or the environment? How can the residents of our city of San Francisco learn the impact of diverting Hetch-Hetchy when there is no real cost to them? Why are the commercial fishermen of the Delta required to sacrifice their living so that the farmers of the Central Valley are able to be provided to protect theirs? The real choices are for us to make ourselves. The shared sacrifices must be founded on the common good. Those who make the decisions need to be the ones who have to live with the consequences of them.

PPIC Report: MANAGING CALIFORNIA'S WATER- THE DOWNSIDE

2011-06-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

As I continue to review the PPIC Report on MANAGING CALIFORNIA’S WATER:FROM CONFLICT TO RECONCILIATION, I continue to consider its recommendations and the impact of them. In my previous article: “PPIC Report Moves the California Water Debate Forward” I emphasized a need to utilize the report’s support of regional planning as a lever for political action by the Green Party of California and our supporters. Being such a comprehensive work, there are recommendations within it that have not been vetted through the process of public input, as a regional plan could be. Of particular concern, is Chapter 7 “Managing Water as a Public Commodity” and the section in it STRENGTHENING WATER TRANSFER LAW and the section MODERNIZING CALIFORNIA’S WATER GRID.

The intention of the writer and the PPIC in the section STRENGTHENING WATER TRANSFER LAW is to encourage “transfers from relatively inefficient or lower-value uses to higher value uses” p. 332. The issue of water efficiency is one that is often the focal point of those on both sides of the water use debate. Commercial developers join conservationists in promoting efficiency of water use. There is much to be said for this, but one thing that I discovered is that sometimes we really work against ourselves when efficiency is taken as a criterion for prioritizing water use. One example of this is when planners in the Middle Rio Grande of New Mexico measured water use from the implementation of water re-use with the computer model developed by Sandia National Laboratories, we found that the result was that there was a loss of water sent to downstream users that impacted on the Rio Grande Compact. In another scenario, it was shown that the lining of irrigation ditches resulted in a loss of groundwater recharge percolating to the aquifer. It was also instructive in observing that the biggest advocate of using water as an economic unit and focusing on efficiency as a determinant in prioritizing allocations was a commercial developer. It figures when one considers the economic use and per capita use in commercial development would be considerably more efficient than agricultural use or residential use.

The issue of transfers between regions is fundamental if California is ever to address the issue of sustainability in regional water plans. It was so important in New Mexico that the planning template of the Interstate Stream Commission used by the 16 planning regions in the state were premised on the condition that regions HAD to rely solely on their own surface flows, as defined by the Compact, and their own supplies of groundwater. This enabled the regions to develop sustainable water budgets and sound Public Welfare Statements, but it also drew the line in how the regions addressed matching water supplies in the region with water uses. California has attempted to enable regions to benefit from diversions and transfers from out of the regions. Further, private water banks could very well work against regional plans. Water rights sold or leased to them from outside the region are not consistent with the planning template. Further, this “paper water” in regions, where water rights have not been adjudicated, is often not substantiated with “wet” water and work against a sustainable and balanced regional water budget.

Sustainable water use and planning is inherently linked to reducing the number of diversions and restricting the transfers of water rights. Our savings accounts of regional water need to be reflected in our aquifers and our coastal waters. Our uses need to be defined by the management of those supplies effectively, and not necessarily efficiently. Our regions deserve the empowerment to make decisions based on their supplies, and their supplies only. When bad decisions are made by regions, bad consequences will result to those regions. When droughts reduce regional supplies, the regions need to adapt to the change with new priorities in THEIR water use. The argument applies to Los Angeles as well as Modesto. As it stands now, diversions are the accepted premise in implementing the “public trust doctrine”. This needs to change.

There are other issues in Chapter 7 that need to be addressed. I hope to alternate entries into alternating positive-negative aspects of the PPIC report and how we can move forward together in the state of California. As we explore the report it is incumbent upon Greens and our supporters to develop forums for discussion and begin the organizing tasks in the water sensitive regions, such as the Delta and the Central Valley. Our candidates need to begin to focus their campaigns on water planning issues and begin to mobilize public opinion around sound water management for California. Our water is our life. Every decision we make today will affect our children’s generation.

PPIC Report Moves the California Water Debate Forward

2011-06-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

The recent publication, MANAGING CALIFORNIA’S WATER: FROM CONFLICT TO RECONCILIATION by the Public Policy Institute of California has created a stir of late. There are concerns expressed in regards to the role of Bechtel Corporation in funding the process that brought the report together. Recently, a forum for discussion by PPIC being held in San Francisco was denounced as a “Greenwashing Event”. The writer, Dan Bacher chooses to dismiss the PPIC with accusations of “elitism” and “institutional racism”. This was based on the lack of representation on the presentation panel of Delta residents, tribal members or fishermen. In point of fact, there is no real representation anywhere in California’s water management system of users, advocates and stakeholders.

What Mr. Bacher omits is the significance of the structural reforms being proposed by the PPIC in the MANAGING Report. It is one thing to criticize Bechtel for its record in Cochabamba and elsewhere around the world. It is quite another thing to summarily dismiss the PPIC report with its proposals in regards to California water. The Report constitutes a change in direction and proposes significant structural reforms long overdue in California. (see MANAGING CALIFORNIA'S WATER, FROM CONFLICT TO RECONCILIATION, Chapter 8, Effective and adaptive Governance, p. 365 "To further encourage integration of water resource planning, the California legislature could create an affirmative structure for regional integrated planning and management. We propose creating nine regional stewardship authorities, coinciding with the jurisdictions of existing regional water quality control boards. As discussed below, the authorities would develop and manage integrated basin plans.")

As things stand, the plain fact is that California’s water politics are polarized and the main arena of battle is the State Legislature. The politics of water are rural (Republican) vs. urban (Democrat) with the result that localities are isolated in regards to diversions from one region to another. Further, the political landscape is skewed towards the urban users in the context of the large metropolitan areas in the state and the resulting Democratic majority in the State Legislature. This was seen in the debate around the peripheral canal in the Delta, in the Hetch-Hetchy diversion and in the Owens Lake diversion.

The point is that this is NOT simply a function of the Democratic Urban Machines that dominate the cities of California. It is a product of a water system that is diffuse and not designed to function in the context of sustainable regional uses. This is a point brought out in the PPIC Report as well. Two key elements remain unaddressed in regards to the future of water management in California:

1. How can sustainable water allocations in California’s regions be planned and implemented without depending on diversions; and

2. How can regional planning processes assure the open input and transparency needed to make fair and equitable decisions.

When one reads the PPIC Report one cannot help but be impressed with its recognition of the need for restructuring water management in California. The dilemma is: California has disregarded the consequences of actions that have increased the stressors on public infrastructure throughout California. The peripheral canal proposal is one more log on that fire. Big Ag and Big Urban are fighting over Big Water. Now that the drought is over everyone has some breathing space to re-structure the entities making the decisions. The water management system of California is a fundamentally flawed process, and the PPIC report is premised on this. This alone makes it a report worthy of consideration.

Climate Change: How bad can it be?

2011-06-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

It is easy to become lulled into intellectual somnolence by the seemingly gradual changes we are incurring in our weather. After all, just how bad can a couple of degrees be?

Oh, we wake up every once in a while when our catastrophe leads media reports on some hurricane, flood or tornado, especially if the event is half-a-world away. We all thought that the outbreak of tornadoes that struck the Southease this spring was bad enough It truly was in Tuscaloosa. Then, we had to live vicariously through Joplin again. I remember May, 1971 tornado that hit Joplin. But we need to pay more attention to the facts of what is happening rather than jumping to unsubstantiated conclusions.

Heidi Cullen give a good summary of what we know about climate change and tornadoes in this post at Huffington Post and then repeated, with comments, by Joe Romm at Climate Progres. I give you that link as Joe's bracketed comments point to additional information

Still, we need more understanding than that and this Mother Jones summary of a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists does just that, bringing attention to the relationship between climate (temperature), ozone and health. There is a lot to piece together and the collage is not a pretty picture or a wonderful future.

The report, published yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists, concludes that CO2-induced temperature increases will worsen ground-level ozone concentrations (the kind coming from power plants and exhaust pipes, not the kind that shields the Earth from UV rays). Higher concentrations of ground-level ozone threaten the health of millions of Americans, an impact that could cost the US $5.4 billion in 2020.

As someone who suffered with asthma as a child, and that was long before we had inhalers or corticosteroids to deal with the symptoms. Asthma is not what I would wish on any child but that is what we are doing.

There are two recent takes on the effects of this. One is a post at Climate Progress that recognizes asthma as an environmental justice issue facing, primarily, people of color. The other is a rather straight forward determination that Californians will be the most affected and shows up on the KQED (SF) blog: Climate Watch. They both read the same report, just framed it differently.

This is going to be additive to the problems that we already have in California. A 2006 report from CSU Fullerton found that air pollution was costing California's some $3 billion annually. Included in this finding were:

23,300 asthma attacks
188,000 days of school absences
3,230 cases of acute bronchitis in children

The authors updated and expanded that study in 2008. This time they included the corridor leading away from the port at Long Beach and all that diesel traffic. Now the cost to California was $28 Billion annually and the costs to our children, in terms of health and education were more striking;

Asthma attacks: 141,370
Days of school absence: 1,259,840
Cases of acute bronchitis in children: 16,110
Days of respiratory symptoms in children: 2,078,300

This is the base problem to which we are adding an additional load from increase pollution.
While the current economic conditions will alter the monetary value, the number of events do not change. Even with school funding being cut and cut, those lost school days deprive our education system of what it really needs to do its job as funding formulas use average daily attendance.

If Greens want to work for better education, if we want to lower the cost of health care, if we want a better future for our children, then we had better be spending a lot of time on the battle for a rational climate policy. It is as important as anything else we do, since it deal with everything at once: energy, the economy, health care, education. The economic cost for California would be as high as $1.8 billion / yr by 2020 if we do nothing. The cost to our children can not be so easily calculated.

Managing our views of California's Water Wars

2011-06-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Rain all day today, strange weather for June around San Jose, gives me some more time to write longer posts. It is also appropriate that I focus on the Water Ware that threatens to overtop the facts that should guide our common sense perception as the melt of this winter's snow pack will threaten to overtop the Delta's levees.

One current battle is being fought in Washington, where Congressman Devin Nunes (R - CA 21) has introduced The San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act (HR 1837). This clearly positions the needs of the farmers on the West side of the San Joaquin Valley as paramount, contrasting them to environmental protections for a "little minnow." It is enough to have Representative John Garamendi (D - CA 10) warn of an all out water war.

This legislation threatens the Delta, jeopardizes drinking water for California cities, and puts the interests of a select well-connected few above the entire state."

"In 1997, we were one signature away from agreeing to an 'all California' water policy solution – until the Westlands Water District walked away at the signing ceremony. I said they would regret it, and today they admitted it, even as they continue to demand a one-sided water grab that is not in the interests of California.

It is every much in the interest of Nunes, and the Westlands Water District, if everyone thinks of this as farmers fighting for their livelihood, and the jobs of their workers, vs the "environmental craziness" that would think a little minnow is more important. But this is only their way to spin the facts. Dan Bacher provides another set of facts... that the nuSplittails and very close to 15,000 chinook salmon. They have been doing this for a long time. I have previously taken issue with this framing of the story, most clearly here in criticizing Leslie Stahl and 60 Minutes.

Now, we find the just plain good investigative work shows just how much Nenues has shaped this story. A recent article in the Central Valley Business Times cites Deirdre Des Jardins,a researcher with California Water Research Associates.

Mapping imagery points toward soil and groundwater salinity as the primary cause of land fallowing near Mendota. This evidence, along with record of previous legal settlements, indicates that high levels of unemployment in the Mendota area are more likely the result of land fallowing that occurred prior to the most recent drought than any type of protections set in place for Delta fisheries.

Green Party policies have always focused on community involvement in determining resource use policies, especially regarding Water. Yet, time and again, government listens to those with the most highly paid lawyers and lobbyists, shutting out the citizenry, depending on spinning the story to disinterested voters who seldom wake up to what is happening until it is too late. That is what is happening with ironically named Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Once again, Governor Brown has named a fox to guard the hen house and the results are predictable. Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla has an OpEd in the Stockton Record where she makes it clear just how well the deck has been stacked in this game.

Under the past governor, the BDCP process was run by a steering committee of export contractors. They failed to meet their deadline in the fall for producing a document for environmental review. Now the process is firmly under the control of Meral and the California Natural Resources Agency.

Local counties, water agencies, farmers and fishermen criticized the BDCP for denying them a meaningful role in planning for the Delta's future. Meral's response has been to create 13 working groups and to give non-exporters four days' formal notice to let him know which ones they want to join. The deadline for this formal notice was May

Meral expects some of the groups to complete their work by the end of June.

Those opposing a peripheral canal are already spread thin and facing tight budgets. For all intents and purposes, this fragmented process with its telescoped timing excludes them.

The GPCA helped start Restore the Delta, at least in co-sponsoring it's first public meeting. Still we should be doing more: educating friend, pointing out truths when we can, working to dislodge those like Nunes who distort the truth for their masters.

The real future of California is going to be determined by how we meet the ecological challenges of the coming decade. Climate, water, health care and the economy are so closely intertwined that only the Green approach can possibly find the right solution.

Challenging Presidential Leadership

2011-05-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, a group of environmental organization leaders sent a letter to both President Obama and China's President Hu. It highlighted the current state of climate change inaction and concluded with the following:

Nature tells us time is running out, but we can’t see the clock. As we blindly reach critical climate “tipping points,” things promise to get worse, much worse. Central to the solution is a wartime-like mobilization by the governments of the United States and China to cut carbon emissions 80 percent (based on 2006 levels) by 2020. This is required if we are to reduce carbon emissions to 350 parts per million in the atmosphere, the level top climate scientists say is safe for humanity.

There is no more important measure of presidential leadership than living up to the expectations of our children to protect their future. Every day our respective governments fail to act, their future grows more perilous. We await your response.

I firmly believe that the same criteria of leadership needs to be applied to the selection of a Green Party presidential candidate. I will not vote for any candidate who does not make this the central issue. For the sake of our our children, we must find a voice who will speak for the future.

Strategy and Structural reform, NOT Language is key to Moving Forward

2011-05-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

I would take issue with Scott's premise in regards to a "new language for a new paradigm". More than that I would take issue with the continued definition of the primary policy debates being structured along the bipolar fault lines, that Scott continues to demonstrate. This requires more than the response below. It also requires an internal review of who we are as Greens and how we can escape the marginalization of irrelevancy.

First, the Tea Party is right about spending and the budget;
Second, the Green Party has NO fight with Tea Party supporters, but we are NOT the same as Tea Party;
Third, the issue of ecological democracy demands we address the structure of American government and not simply the policies of American government;
Fourth, working towards structural reform also means we redefine the constituencies as they are represented in political parties, this is NOT simply a matter of changing the language;
Fifth, if any third or fourth parties are to establish viability there is a greater need to address the role and character of non-profits and advocacy groups in the political process. Failure to do this will simply result in one party systems as is seen in American cities and rural states;
Sixth, public employees are civil servants and the issue of organization of labor is NOT bound to the future of public employee pensions, they are distinct matters;
Seventh, the debate within the Green Party and elsewhere, needs to be presented with a strategy capable of unifying people beyond the existing identity politics of the “faux left” or the anti-government politics of the Tea Party.

The change in language is simply the result of the change in agenda and the change in strategy. Cities, like Detroit, are withering on the vine. It is not fair or even-handed to deny the impact of the Democratic Urban Machines. We see it and we know it. But Greens have NOT shown the ability to move beyond the fundamental Democratic Party constructs of either agenda or structure. And, as a party it remains bound to progressivism because of its deep-rooted ideological foundation that has NOT broken out of the “paradigm”, Scott’s protestations to the contrary.

Scott McLarty: New Language for a New Paradigm

2011-05-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: See reposted below an important article on the Common Dreams Web Site by Scott McLarty, media coordinator for the Green Party of the United States,on the need for new language in political discourse in the U.S.

Editor's Update: Scott McLarty's article is Number 20 in this week's list of most viewed articles on Common Dreams.

Posted on Common Dreams, Thursday, May 19, 2011

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality
by Scott McLarty

"Everybody pulled his weight, Didn't need no welfare state... Those were the days!"

Those are some of the lyrics from the theme song to the popular 1970s TV sitcom 'All in the Family', considered controversial in its day, about a working-class bigot named Archie Bunker, who sang it at the top of the show with his wife Edith. Archie's nostalgia for pre-1960s America informed much of the show, which satirized small-minded conservativism, paranoid patriotism, contempt for youth culture, and racism.

One of the ironies of Archie Bunker's worldview is that the 1930s, 40s, and 50s weren't nearly as conservative as he remembered them. The same faulty nostalgia drives the so-called conservatives of today's Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, who imagine those decades as a time when hard-working Americans pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.

It's true that Americans worked hard during these years. But the bootstraps stuff is nonsense. The 30s through 50s were the time of the New Deal, low-cost loans from the Federal Housing Administration, the GI Bill, huge subsidies for defense contractors during the Cold War and other industries that employed millions of people, massive transfer of funding from cities to the burgeoning suburbs, federal projects like interstate highway construction and the space program, generous investment in public schools, record union membership, high tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, good job benefits, and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which ensured financial stability in old age and medical crises.

These things softened the trauma of the Great Depression and gave us the greatest period of prosperity in US history. Middle-aged Tea Partiers and Republicans, born in the 1940s through the 1970s, reaped the benefits of the kind of progressive 'big government' and 'socialist' ideas they now condemn. By their own standards, Tea Partiers are practically red diaper babies.

The irony of the Cold War's capitalism vs. communism paradigm is that capitalism in the US and other western countries required generous helpings of socialism to make it work. Conservative politicians like Eisenhower and Nixon seemed to understand this and generally supported the social programs listed above.

Since the Reagan Administration, Republicans, with help from Democrats, have worked to dismantle such programs and policies. Since 2008, the conservative movement has been galvanized by President Barack Obama's victory (although Mr. Obama's actions in office hardly place him on the left), leading to the formation of the Tea Party and igniting the conflict in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker's plan to cut benefits for public-sector employees and abolish collective bargaining rights.

The economic principles of today's GOP and the Tea Party don't come from any period of time within their own memory, so it's difficult to identify what kind of values they're trying to preserve or restore. But if we look further back in American history, to the late 19th century, we can find a match in the Robber Baron Era.

The Robber Baron Era was a period of misery for the millions of Americans who worked in factories before child labor laws, the eight-hour day and 40-hour work week, workplace safety laws (think of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), or recognition of collective bargaining rights. It was a time of widespread political corruption, with officeholders in cahoots with the chiefs of monopolies and near-monopolies. Laissez-faire capitalism was mostly unchecked by the power of unions or by government regulation. It ended with a period of widespread labor unrest and the reforms of the Progressive Era (1890s through the 1920s).

William Cronon recounted some further history in a recent New York Times column:

"Republicans in Wisconsin are seeking to reverse civic traditions that for more than a century have been among the most celebrated achievements not just of their state, but of their own party as well.... [W]hile Americans are aware of this progressive tradition, they probably don't know that many of the innovations on behalf of working people were at least as much the work of Republicans as of Democrats.... When Gov. Gaylord A. Nelson, a Democrat, sought to extend collective bargaining rights to municipal workers in 1959, he did so in partnership with a Legislature in which one house was controlled by the Republicans. Both sides believed the normalization of labor-management relations would increase efficiency and avoid crippling strikes like those of the Milwaukee garbage collectors during the 1950s. Later, in 1967, when collective bargaining was extended to state workers for the same reasons, the reform was promoted by a Republican governor, Warren P. Knowles, with a Republican Legislature. The policies that the current governor, Scott Walker, has sought to overturn, in other words, are legacies of his own party."

("Wisconsin's Radical Break," March 21, 2011)

On the evidence of history, calling today's Republican Party and their Tea Party supporters 'conservative' is as absurd as calling supporters of civil rights and racial justice 'reactionary' because they invoke the values of the Reconstruction Era.

Radical Ideology for a New Century

"I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other." -- Pete Seeger

Gov. Scott Walker is not a conservative, nor is Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. Neither are Fox News, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, or any of their fellow corporate royalists and faux populists.

They are radicals. The GOP and the Tea Party are inspired by a vision that's partly reactionary (revival of Robber Baron Era economics) and partly innovative, with world-changing ideas that would have astounded JP Morgan and John D Rockefeller.

The innovative parts of their agenda include the embrace of globalization and the international power of major corporations through pacts like NAFTA and bodies like the World Bank and IMF; the neocon doctrine of preemptive military aggression; 'public-private partnerships' such as cash-cow contracts for the homeland security industry; huge taxpayer-funded handouts for favored corporate elites, the most obvious of example of which is the TARP bailout that funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to reckless Wall Street firms after the 2008 economic collapse that the latter caused. (Many Tea Partiers, to their credit, opposed the Wall Street bailouts.)

It's worth noting here that such agenda are bipartisan, supported by mainstream Democrats.

One of the top claims of 'conservative' activists is their devotion to the US Constitution and the ideals of our Founding Fathers, which motivated the reading aloud of the Constitution in the US House of Representatives in January when Republicans took over as the majority.

For Republicans and Tea Partiers, the Constitution might as well be written in hieroglyphs. Except for the Second Amendment's right to bear arms, they decline to apply the Constitution to the denial of habeas corpus, warrantless surveillance of US citizens, torture, disregard for international treaties signed by the US, and other abuses that are clearly outlawed.

On the other hand, they enthusiastically defend the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, which upheld 'corporate personhood' and exacerbated the widespread corruption of our election system, even though the Constitution grants no rights to corporations and the Founding Fathers warned against the excessive power of the monied interests. Corporate personhood was enshrined by a series of Supreme Court rulings, beginning with Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886, which extended the 14th Amendment's equal protect clause to cover corporations. The rulings coincided with the post-Reconstruction passage of the first Jim Crow laws in the South and the beginning of the Robber Baron Era. In effect, legal rights and protections were transferred from black people to corporations.

All of this gives us a clue about the real ideology motivating today's conservative (and many liberal) politicians, media pundits, and activists: corporate power, profit, and privilege.

All other principles are subservient to corporatism. The GOP isn't opposed to socialism when it satisfies corporate lobbies, as the Wall Street bailouts prove.

Consider Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, currently on a mission to overturn the Democrats' health care reform bill. Does Gov. Scott really oppose public spending for health care? In 1997, he was forced to resign as CEO of Columbia/HCA after the company pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and agreed to a $600-plus million fine in the largest fraud settlement in US history, for fraud involving Medicare and other public health programs. For bilking taxpayers out of hundreds of millions, Rick Scott was paid $9.88 million and allowed to keep 10 million shares of stock worth over $350 million.

Republican politicians might be gunning for Medicare and Medicaid, but they're not above making a killing from such programs, on behalf of themselves and the corporations they're connected with via the public service/private business revolving door. The same ideology informs the granting of no-bid contracts, tax breaks and loopholes, and other forms of subsidies to favored firms.

George Lakoff notes that "The wealthy have, to a large extent, amassed that wealth through indirect contributions to them by governments -- governments build roads corporations use, fund schools that train their workers, subsidize their energy costs, do research they capitalize on, subsidize their access to resources, promote trade for them, and on and on."

Dedication to corporate interests overwhelms all other concerns. It turns the conflict between free-market capitalism and socialism into a quaint relic from another century, rather like the conflict between the German princes and the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation. It makes the free market into a myth for the gullible who believe that locally owned Main Street shops can compete with WalMart or Old McDonald's family farm has a chance against Monsanto.

Conservatism means, or should mean, emphasis on entrepreneurialism (as opposed to corporate capitalism), self-reliant local economies (small businesses and farms, rather than big chain stores and agriconglomerates), economic security for Americans (freedom from destitution because of unemployment, old age, or the cost of medical emergencies), democratic sovereignty (rather than subordination to international trade cabals), observance of the US Constitution and international laws and treaties that the US has signed (Article VI), and deployment of the US armed forces solely for immediate self-defense.

Today's conservative leaders have abandoned these ideas and replaced them with a scheme to manipulate government for a radical redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top. For these politicians, government is only a threat to America when it benefits working people or the poor or public health or the environment. Big government for big business is perfectly acceptable.

The amassing of wealth and power for the corporate sector has become the major project of the GOP in the 21st century, with the Democratic Party's cooperation.

New Language for a New Paradigm

We need terminology that more accurately describes political tendencies in the US and world in the 21st century, placing the rule of corporate elites and militarism on one side and democracy, human rights and freedoms, and the health of the planet on the other.

The evolution of two-party politics in the US, with politicians from both parties under the influence of corporate lobbies and campaign checks, made it inevitable that both Democrats and Republicans would veer away from their stated principles. Such influence has always been evident, but began to push politicians into extremist territory with the beginning of the Reagan Revolution. (And even Reagan left Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security alone.)

Progressives are as deluded in hoping for a progressive rehabilitation of the Democratic Party as true conservatives are in believing the GOP upholds their values:

"Money's conquest of American politics has therefore rendered impotent the well-worn prescriptions of the left and the right, which now deliver only scapegoats rather than solutions... Today, government can be 'big' in terms of spending while handing all its work over to contractors. In the twentieth century, business and government were adversaries. Today, the wall between the two that may have once existed has become a revolving door and both share common interests."

('One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy' by Allison Stanger, quoted in Harper's)

The traditional spectrum of Republican-conservative on the right and Democrat-liberal at the left, with a gray area for moderates in the middle, belongs in the trash. The 'centrist' gap between the two parties is really an overlap where Republican and Democrat politicians are most enthusiastically loyal to corporate lobbies, with euphemisms like "Republican moderate," "Democratic Leadership Council," "blue dog," and "triangulation" to describe them.

A more accurate spectrum would find most Republicans at the furthest extreme and most of the Democratic Party next to them. This is the side that serves corporate power, profit, and privilege. It embraces the ideology that underpins state capitalism, a condition in which major corporations have grown so powerful that government's chief purpose is to take marching orders from them.

Think of government as a wholly owned subsidiary of General Electric, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Monsanto, Wall Street, the insurance and pharmaceutical cartels, and other top industries. (China, which now provides cheap labor for corporations, has shown us that both communism and capitalism can be subsumed into the state capitalist system.)

What's on the other side of the new spectrum? In the US, not much, if we're talking about political clout. Some Democrats like Dennis Kucinich, Greens, environmental and community activists, socialists, unions that haven't placed allegiance to Democratic politicians ahead of their members' needs, even some libertarians and traditional conservatives who recognize that unrestrained corporate power is as much a menace as state power.

The retreat of the Democratic Party from its traditional constituencies has enabled Republicans to move towards even greater fanaticism. When Democrats co-opted the health care mandate idea from Republicans, who had introduced it in the 1990s, they drove the GOP into a frenzy of opposition to reform, further marginalizing single-payer (Medicare For All), the one proposal that would have provided universal medical care and dramatically lowered costs. The health care reform debate turned out to be a factional dispute over which party best served insurance and other medical industries. (For a more thorough description of "liberal disintegration," see Sam Smith's "The death of liberalism and what to do about it" in The Progressive Review, May 9, 2011.)

Progressivism has nearly collapsed as a political force, even though progressives still exist and sometimes get elected. We can begin digging ourselves out of this hole by adopting a new model to replace the Republic/conservative/right vs. Democrat/liberal/left paradigm. We can declare our independence from the bipartisan consensus. We can reject the "active propaganda machinery controlled by the world's largest corporations [that] constantly reassures us that consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess is the cause of our distress, and economic globalization is both a historical inevitability and a boon to the human species" (David C. Korten, 'When Corporations Rule the World'). .

Doing so will bust open the narrow political debate offered daily in the mainstream media. It will give us a revolutionary chance to reverse the dangerous direction of the US in the 21st century, which now promises decades of perpetual war, undiminished fossil fuel consumption as the climate heats up, privatization of dwindling resources like fresh water, an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, the collapse of financial security for working Americans, concentration of power and wealth among a small number of 'too big to fail' firms, and growing government and corporate intrusion into our private lives.

Call it Corporate America vs. We the People. Globalization vs. Mother Earth. Privatization vs. the Public Good. Wall Street vs. Main Street. Plutocracy vs. Democracy. Which side are you on?

Scott McLarty serves as media coordinator for the Green Party of the United States and for the DC Statehood Green Party. He can be reached at mclarty@greens.org.

Corruption never has been compulsoruy

2011-05-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

I recently re-read Carmel's Robinson Jeffers's Shine Perishing Republic. One fragment of that poem resonated with me to the point that I tweeted about the need for "dead white poets" to remind us that "corruption is not compulsory…" and it still haunts me. It seems so necessary as corruption seems to be just part of the landscape on Washington. I should have put a couple of explanatory hashtags in that tweet: #ensign would have been appropriate and probably #coburn. That the Sen. from Oklahoma can face the public after using his influence to help out a colleague who can't keep his pecker in his pants is really an example of just how cynical the public has become… like we seem to expect this of our electeds.

This made me go back to check the Anticorruption Republican, a blog that was once a reliable source of info on all of those Republicans slimed by association with Jack Abramoff. Alas, since most of them are gone, so is public access to that blog. But then, personal proclivities was not their main target anyway.

Now, I read that ex-Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold (maybe going to run for the seat of retiring Sen. Kohl) with a blast at the ties some Congressional Democrats have with big business. If Wisconsin does send him back, it would make an interesting show.

What it obvious out of all of this is that Jeffers was right. Corruption is truly not compulsory. It is the result of a series of decision made consciously over time. Whether to use one's power to help a friend hide is problem, as Coburn did, or to become the lapdog for corporate interests most of the decisions seemed to be "logical" at the time. But as one decision follow another, at some point, it just become the way they do business.

When will the assault of public education end?

2011-05-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

The national media has covered the Republican Assault on public employee unions in Wisconsin. It has not paid as much attention to California sine the Republicans do not have the capability of passing such legislation here. So, the assault comes with a different tactic, the ghost of Howard Jarvis reminding us to continue cutting taxes even though our schools get worse every year.

Joe Navarro sent me the following note and I would ask you to read it and his blog post that it mentions. Joe is a San Benito County Green, a published poet and a member of his local school board.

Dear Friends,

As you know I am a school board trustee and have to grapple with a deficit and budget crisis. The state underfunds schools and the Republicans and media blame public school employees for the economic problems of school districts. The burden of the problems are placed on the backs of working people and children, yet no one with any authority wants to force the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes. Please take a moment to read my blog article. Let me know what you think. Thank you

GPCA poised for gains… or not

2011-04-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

The General Assembly of the Green Party of California takes place this weekend. For those who will attend, there are a few things I hope you consider while deciding the next steps we will take.

Never before has money played such a key role in politics. Greens have been taking steps to counteract the effect of the Citizen's United decision. However, it does not appear that any great gains have been made on that front, even with key people spending a significant amount of time in the Move to Amend effort.

While washing dishes last night, I listened to the Rachel Maddow show. She was making a very important point regarding the now nearly infamous Paul Ryan budget that passed the House. Republican Congress Critters, including Wisconsin's Ryan, are not being warmly received while back in their districts over the Easter Recess. In fact, they are being confronted with almost as much rancor as was directed at the Obama Health Care plan last summer. Her key point is that, while Progressive organizations have contracted for $106,000 in media buys now, just 4 organizations with ties Corporate Cash, have put up over $2 Mil to support Ryan's budget… the one that would, among other things, end Medicare as we know it.

I introduce this point about money in order to underscore just how uneven the playing filed is. The GPCA has not been so successful raising money. We managed to have a mini-fundraising drive that netted $7,000 just before the General Assembly.

So, what are we going to do if we can't compete on money. Greens back a set of policies that make a lot more sense than those embodied in the Ryan Budget,but who knows what they are.

In a speech given at Occidental College of few years back, Bill Moyers made the statement that "The only answer for organized money is organized people." In fact, this was important enough that he repeated it several time: "The only answer…" and then "is organized people."

It is clear to some that the wheels are coming off the American version of Capitalism. Even Alan Greenspan acknowledged that he did not truly understand just that organizations, like banks and insurance companies, do not act in their own long term best interest, but are tilling to take excessive risks in order to get immediate profit for the executives of these companies. Greenspan was a devotee of Ayn Rand, the same Ayn Rand whose selfish version of living in the world inspires many Republican leaders today.

It is a given that we don't have the money top play the corporate media game. I note the number of people who actually participate in our social media, and it does not yet add up.

If we are to take the next step, and the world needs us to do so, then I think we need to consider just how we can accomplish it. Look around the General Assembly. How many students do you see? If these are the future of the Party, what are we doing to build that future? If we can't answer the question of how many Campus Green chapters exist and who those leader are, it does not speak well for our future.

Maybe it does come back to money, and how we choose to spend what resources we have. We need, at a minimum&hellip' and need to keep it to a minimum… to have full time fundraising that is not dependent on another full time job to live on.

We need to be able to more nimble in how we deal with the media. It is not just that smart cell phones, Android aps and social media have expanded the range of possibilities, they have fundamentally changed the expectation of just how quickly a political organization can respond. This is one more aspect of being a political party that needs full time attention and, once more, there is a need to professionalize it so that no one has to give up making a living in order to do that work.

The real question for this General Assembly is whether we are going to be a player in the political arena, or will we just play at it.

It isn't nice to fool Mother Nature.

2011-04-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

I am sure that we are all concerned about magnitude of the storm system that has devastated the South over the past 36 hrs. The latest number of fatalities that I have seen on CNN was 230+.

I think that it is important to put this all in perspective. These storms, and the earlier ones that went from Arkansas North Carolina, are being fed by record, or near record sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Gulf of Mexico. Check the data at Jeff Masters' Weather Underground sit, from which I linked this image:

May 1861: Hampton, Virginia, My Hometown

2011-04-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

Adam Goodheart's new Civil War history highlights important characters and stories of significant impact, but nowadays forgotten. One story is that of three slaves -- Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend -- who rowed across a river at night from Confederate lines to Union Fortress Monroe, near my home town, Hampton, Virginia. General Benjamin Butler declared the men "contraband of war" and refused to send them back, thus, opening the gates to a migration of runaway slaves, including my mother's family -- Jacksons, Bardens, and Drummonds -- who still live around the Hampton - Newport News - Norfolk area of Virginia to this day. This was a milestone on the road to Emancipation and also to the founding of my alma mater, Hampton University, in 1868.

Published in The New York Times, April 1, 2011
How Slavery Really Ended in America
by Adam Goodheart

Old Picture of Fortress Monroe in the 1860s

On May 23, 1861, little more than a month into the Civil War, three young black men rowed across the James River in Virginia and claimed asylum in a Union-held citadel. Fort Monroe, Va., a fishhook-shaped spit of land near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, had been a military post since the time of the first Jamestown settlers. This spot where the slaves took refuge was also, by remarkable coincidence, the spot where slavery first took root, one summer day in 1619, when a Dutch ship landed with some 20 African captives for the fledgling Virginia Colony.

Two and half centuries later, in the first spring of the Civil War, Fort Monroe was a lonely Union redoubt in the heart of newly Confederate territory. Its defenders stood on constant guard. Frigates and armed steamers crowded the nearby waters known as Hampton Roads, one of the world’s great natural harbors. Perspiring squads of soldiers hauled giant columbiad cannons from the fort’s wharf up to its stone parapets. Yet history would come to Fort Monroe not amid the thunder of guns and the clash of fleets, but stealthily, under cover of darkness, in a stolen boat.

Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend were field hands who — like hundreds of other local slaves — had been pressed into service by the Confederates, compelled to build an artillery emplacement amid the dunes across the harbor. They labored beneath the banner of the 115th Virginia Militia, a blue flag bearing a motto in golden letters: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

After a week or so of this, they learned some deeply unsettling news. Their master, a rebel colonel named Charles Mallory, was planning to send them even farther from home, to help build fortifications in North Carolina. That was when the three slaves decided to leave the Confederacy and try their luck, just across the water, with the Union.

It cannot have been an easy decision for the men. What kind of treatment would they meet with at the fort? If the federal officers sent them back, would they be punished as runaways — perhaps even as traitors? But they took their chances. Rowing toward the wharf that night in May, they hailed a guard and were admitted to the fort.

The next morning they were summoned to see the commanding general. The fugitives could not have taken this as an encouraging sign. Having lived their whole lives near the fort, they probably knew many of its peacetime officers by sight, but the man who awaited them behind a cluttered desk was someone whose face they had never seen. Worse still, as far as faces went, his was not — to put it mildly — a pleasant one. It was the face of a man whom many people, in the years ahead, would call a brute, a beast, a cold-blooded murderer. It was a face that could easily make you believe such things: a low, balding forehead, slack jowls and a tight, mean little mouth beneath a drooping mustache. It would have seemed a face of almost animal-like stupidity had it not been for the eyes. These glittered shrewdly, almost hidden amid crinkled folds of flesh. One of them had an odd sideways cast, as if its owner were always considering something else besides the thing in front of him. These were the eyes that now surveyed Baker, Mallory and Townsend.

The general began asking them questions: Who was their master? Was he a rebel or a Union man? Were they field hands or house servants? Did they have families? Why had they run away? Could they tell him anything about the Confederate fortifications they had been working on? Their response to this last question — that the battery was still far from completion — seemed to please him. At last he dismissed the three brusquely, offering no indication of their fate.

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler arrived at the fort only a day ahead of the fugitive slaves, greeted at the esplanade by a 13-gun salute. That morning, Butler sat down to compose an important initial report. When an adjutant interrupted to inform him of the fugitives, Butler set down his pen. The War Department could wait. The three ragged black men waiting outside were a more pressing matter.

Butler was no abolitionist, but the three slaves presented a problem. True, the laws of the United States were clear: all fugitives must be returned to their masters. The founding fathers enshrined this in the Constitution; Congress reinforced it in 1850 with the Fugitive Slave Act; and it was still the law of the land — including, as far as the federal government was concerned, within the so-called Confederate states. The war had done nothing to change it. Most important, noninterference with slavery was the very cornerstone of the Union’s war policy. President Abraham Lincoln had begun his inaugural address by making this clear, pointedly and repeatedly. “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists,” the president said. “I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Yet to Fort Monroe’s new commander, the fugitives who turned up at his own front gate seemed like a novel case. The enemy had been deploying them to construct a battery aimed directly at his fort — and no doubt would put them straight back to work if recaptured, with time off only for a sound beating. They had just offered him some highly useful military intelligence. And Virginia, as of 12 or so hours ago, was officially in rebellion against the federal government, having just ratified the secession ordinance passed a month before. Butler had not invited the fugitives in or engineered their escape, but here they were, literally at his doorstep: a conundrum with political and military implications, at the very least. He could not have known — not yet — that his response that day might change the course of the national drama that was then just beginning. Yet it was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that an unanticipated bureaucratic dilemma would force the hand of history.

Despite his rank, General Butler had been a professional soldier barely four weeks. In private life, back in Massachusetts, he was a lawyer, and a very successful one — although he grew up poor, the swamp Yankee son of a widow who kept a boardinghouse in Lowell, the textile-mill town. Unable to attract clients through social connections or charm, he became an expert quibbler: a man who knew every loose thread in the great tangled skein of common law and who could unravel an opponent’s entire case with the gentlest of tugs. By his early 40s, he had also built a successful career as a state legislator and harbored larger political ambitions.

A fellow officer once called Butler “less like a major general than like a politician who is coaxing for votes.” Race-baiting was red meat to many of his working-class constituents in Lowell, and he had always been glad to toss morsels in their direction. But after barely 24 hours at Fort Monroe, the new commander had already sized up his new constituency. The garrison was made up predominantly of eager volunteers from New England, many with antislavery sympathies. How was Butler to win the confidence — or even obedience — of such men if his first act as their commander was to send three poor blacks back into bondage?

Butler’s features may have been brutish and his manners coarse, but inwardly, he nursed the outsize vanity of certain physically ugly men — vanity often manifest in a craving for approval and adulation. He also possessed a sympathetic, even occasionally sentimental, heart.

Still . . . sentiment was a fine thing; so was the admiration of one’s subordinates. Ultimately, though, his duty was to his commander in chief. With a few strokes of his pen, Lincoln had made Butler a major general; the president could just as easily unmake him, sending him back to Lowell in disgrace — and with another stroke, for that matter, send the blacks back to their master as slaves.

Whatever Butler’s decision on the three fugitives’ fate, he would have to reach it quickly. He had barely picked up his pen to finally begin that report before an adjutant interrupted with another message: a rebel officer, under flag of truce, had approached the causeway of Fort Monroe. The Virginians wanted their slaves back.

Waiting before the front gate was a man on horseback: Maj. John Baytop Cary of the 115th. With his silver gray whiskers and haughtily tilted chin, he appeared every inch the Southern cavalier.

Butler, also on horseback, went out to meet him. The men rode, side by side, off federal property and into rebel Virginia. They must have seemed an odd pair: the dumpy Yankee, unaccustomed to the saddle, slouching along like a sack of potatoes; the trim, upright Virginian, in perfect control of himself and his mount.

Cary got down to business. “I am informed,” he said, “that three Negroes belonging to Colonel Mallory have escaped within your lines. I am Colonel Mallory’s agent and have charge of his property. What do you mean to do with those Negroes?”

“I intend to hold them,” Butler said.

“Do you mean, then, to set aside your constitutional obligation to return them?”

Even the dour Butler must have found it hard to suppress a smile. This was, of course, a question he had expected. And he had prepared what he thought was a fairly clever answer.

“I mean to take Virginia at her word,” he said. “I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be.”

“But you say we cannot secede,” Cary retorted, “and so you cannot consistently detain the Negroes.”

“But you say you have seceded,” Butler said, “so you cannot consistently claim them. I shall hold these Negroes as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property.”

Ever the diligent litigator, Butler had been reading up on his military law. In time of war, he knew, a commander had a right to seize any enemy property that was being used for hostile purposes. The three fugitive slaves, before their escape, were helping build a Confederate gun emplacement. Very well, then — if the Southerners insisted on treating blacks as property, this Yankee lawyer would treat them as property, too. Legally speaking, he had as much justification to confiscate Baker, Mallory and Townsend as to intercept a shipment of muskets or swords.

Cary, frustrated, rode back to the Confederate lines. Butler, for his part, returned to Fort Monroe feeling rather pleased with himself. Still, he knew that vanquishing the rebel officer was only a minor victory, and perhaps a momentary one if his superiors in Washington frowned on what he had done.

The following day, a Saturday, Butler picked up his pen and resumed his twice-interrupted dispatch to Washington. Certain questions had arisen, he began, “of very considerable importance both in a military and political aspect, and which I beg leave to herewith submit.”

But before this missive reached its destination, matters would become even more complicated. On Sunday morning, eight more fugitives turned up at Union lines outside the fort. On Monday, there were 47 — and not just young men now, but women, old people, entire families. There was a mother with a 3-month-old infant in her arms. There was an aged slave who had been born in the year of America’s independence.

By Wednesday, a Massachusetts soldier would write home: “Slaves are brought in here hourly.”

“What’s to Be Done With the Blacks?” asked a headline in The Chicago Tribune. That was the question now facing the Lincoln administration. Within days after the three fugitive slaves crossed the river, their exploits — and their fate — were being discussed throughout the nation. At first the newspapers played it more or less as a comic sketch in a minstrel show: a Yankee shyster outwits a drawling Southern aristocrat. But Lincoln saw things in a more serious light. The president realized he might now be forced to make a signal verdict about matters he previously tried to avoid: slavery, race and emancipation.

Lincoln and his cabinet gathered to address Butler’s decision — and ended up punting. While reminding Butler that “the business you are sent upon . . . is war, not emancipation,” they left the general to decide what to do with fugitive slaves — including whether or not to continue declaring them contraband of war. Unfortunately, no detailed account of the deliberations survives. But a letter from one cabinet secretary, Montgomery Blair, suggests they were driven by a motive as common in Washington then as it is now: “a desire to escape responsibility for acting at all at this time.” By that point, the administration had already received a second dispatch from Butler, describing the influx of women and children. With this in mind, Blair — a member of a slaveholding Maryland family — suggested one pragmatic “modification” to Butler’s policy. “You can . . . take your pick of the lot and let the rest go so as not to be required to feed unproductive laborers or indeed any that you do not require,” he urged. As to the slaves’ eventual fate, Blair wrote, of course no one was suggesting that they be set free. Perhaps at the end of the war, those who belonged to men convicted of treason could be legally confiscated and sent off to Haiti or Central America. (The New York Herald, meanwhile, proposed that the federal government should wait until the war ended and sell all the slaves back to their owners, at half-price, to finance its cost.)

Yet Butler realized what Blair did not: events were unfolding far too quickly for any of that. Despite the counsels from Washington, Butler was not turning away “unproductive” fugitives. He replied: “If I take the able-bodied only, the young must die. If I take the mother, must I not take the child?” By early June, some 500 fugitives were within the Union lines at Fort Monroe.

“Stampede Among the Negroes in Virginia,” proclaimed Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, with a double-page spread of dramatic woodcuts showing black men, women and children crossing a creek under a full moon, then being welcomed heartily into the fort by General Butler himself (or rather, by the artist’s trimmer, handsomer version of him). One correspondent estimated that “this species of property under Gen. Butler’s protection [is] worth $500,000, at a fair average of $1,000 apiece in the Southern human flesh market.”

Journalists throughout the Union quipped relentlessly about the “shipments of contraband goods” or, in the words of The Times, “contraband property having legs to run away with, and intelligence to guide its flight” — until, within a week or two after Butler’s initial decision, the fugitives had a new name: contrabands. It was a perfectly composed bit of slang, a minor triumph of Yankee ingenuity.

Were these blacks people or property? Free or slave? Such questions were, as yet, unanswerable — for answering them would have raised a host of other questions that few white Americans were ready to address. Contrabands let the speaker or writer off the hook by letting the escapees be all those things at once. “Never was a word so speedily adopted by so many people in so short a time,” one Union officer wrote. Within a few weeks, the average Northern newspaper reader could scan, without blinking, a sentence like this one: “Several contrabands came into the camp of the First Connecticut Regiment today.”

As routine as the usage soon became, however, a hint of Butler’s joke remained, a slight edge of nervous laughter. A touch of racist derision, too: William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, carped, justly enough, that it was offensive to speak of human beings that way. Yet in its very absurdity, reflecting the Alice-in-Wonderland legal reasoning behind Butler’s decision, the term also mocked the absurdity of slavery — and the willful stupidity of federal laws that, for nearly a century, had acknowledged no meaningful difference between a bushel of corn and a human being with dark skin. Eventually, even black leaders adopted it.

Back at Monroe — dubbed “the freedom fort” — fugitives continued arriving daily. Each morning, dozens lined up to pitch in with manual labor. Soon they seemed almost like members of the garrison. A Times correspondent wrote: “Their shovels and their other implements of labor, they handle and carry as soldiers do their guns. . . . I have no doubt they would make fair or even excellent soldiers.” Moreover, as the garrison’s medical chief remarked, “they are the pleasantest faces to be seen at the post.”

Many of the Union soldiers had never really spoken with a black person before; the Vermont farmboys had perhaps never even seen one before leaving home. Now they were conversing with actual men and women who had been (and perhaps still were) slaves: people who had previously figured only as a political abstraction. Some fugitives shared horrific accounts; one man described “bucking,” a practice in which a slave, before being beaten, had his wrists and ankles tied and slipped over a wooden stake. Almost all spoke of loved ones sold away; the most chilling thing was that they said it matter-of-factly, as if their wives or children had simply died.

Perhaps most surprising of all — for Northerners accustomed to Southern tales of contentedly dependent slaves — was this, in the words of one soldier: “There is a universal desire among the slaves to be free. . . . Even old men and women, with crooked backs, who could hardly walk or see, shared the same feeling.”

General Butler grew ever more adamant in the defense of “his” contrabands, to a degree that must have shocked his old associates. By July, he began pressing the Lincoln administration to admit that the contrabands were not really contraband: that they had become free. Indeed, that they were — in a legal sense — no longer things but people: “Have they not by their master’s acts, and the state of war, assumed the condition, which we hold to be the normal one, of those made in God’s image? . . . I confess that my own mind is compelled by this reasoning to look upon them as men and women.”

It would take another 14 months — and tens of thousands more Union casualties — before the Lincoln administration was ready to endorse such a view.

“Shall we now end the war and not eradicate the cause?” the general wrote to a friend in August. “Will not God demand this of us now [that] he has taken away all excuse for not pursuing the right?” (During the rest of the war, Butler’s support for black civil rights — and harsh treatment of rebel sympathizers — made him hated throughout most of the South, where he won the nickname Beast Butler.)

More and more people had begun to share Butler’s conviction that the fugitives at Monroe stood in the vanguard of a larger revolution. “I have watched them with deep interest, as they filed off to their work, or labored steadily through the long, hot day,” a Northern visitor to the fort wrote. “Somehow there was to my eye a weird, solemn aspect to them, as they walked slowly along, as if they, the victims, had become the judges in this awful contest, or as if they were . . . spinning, unknown to all, the destinies of the great Republic.”

Earthshaking events are sometimes set in motion by small decisions. Perhaps the most famous example was when Rosa Parks boarded a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala. More recently, a Tunisian fruit vendor’s refusal to pay a bribe set off a revolution that continues to sweep across the Arab world. But in some ways, the moment most like the flight of fugitive slaves to Fort Monroe came two decades ago, when a minor East German bureaucratic foul-up loosed a tide of liberation across half of Europe. On the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, a tumultuous throng of people pressed against the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie, in response to an erroneous announcement that the ban on travel to the West would be lifted immediately. The captain in charge of the befuddled East German border guards dialed and redialed headquarters to find some higher-up who could give him definitive orders. None could. He put the phone down and stood still for a moment, pondering. “Perhaps he came to his own decision,” Michael Meyer of Newsweek would write. “Whatever the case, at 11:17 p.m. precisely, he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, ‘Why not?’ . . . ‘Alles auf!’ he ordered. ‘Open ’em up,’ and the gates swung wide.”

The Iron Curtain did not unravel at that moment, but that night the possibility of cautious, incremental change ceased to exist, if it had ever really existed at all. The wall fell because of those thousands of pressing bodies, and because of that border guard’s shrug.

In the very first months of the Civil War — after Baker, Mallory and Townsend breached their own wall, and Butler shrugged — slavery’s iron curtain began falling all across the South. Lincoln’s secretaries John Hay and John Nicolay, in their biography of the president, would say of the three slaves’ escape, “Out of this incident seems to have grown one of the most sudden and important revolutions in popular thought which took place during the whole war.”

Within weeks after the first contrabands’ arrival at Fort Monroe, slaves were reported flocking to the Union lines just about anywhere there were Union lines: in Northern Virginia, on the Mississippi, in Florida. It is unclear how many of these escapees knew of Butler’s decision, but probably quite a few did. Edward Pierce, a Union soldier who worked closely with the contrabands, marveled at “the mysterious spiritual telegraph which runs through the slave population,” though he most likely exaggerated just a bit when he continued, “Proclaim an edict of emancipation in the hearing of a single slave on the Potomac, and in a few days it will be known by his brethren on the gulf.”

In August, Lincoln’s War Department tried to bring some clarity to the chaos by asking Union commanders to collect detailed information on each fugitive: not just name and physical description but “the name and the character, as loyal or disloyal, of the master” — since whether the master supported the Union or the Confederacy was, of course, essential to determining whether the particular man or woman counted as legitimate contraband. Such a system would let the federal government assure slaveholders that their “rights” were protected, and possibly return the slaves to their proper owners once the rebel states had rejoined the Union.

But how were officers supposed to tell whether a master they had never laid eyes on was loyal or disloyal — even assuming that the slave was telling the truth in identifying him? Besides, didn’t the military have more pressing business at the moment, like fighting the war? The new contraband doctrine was utterly unenforceable almost from the moment it was devised, but it became hugely influential precisely because it was so unenforceable: it did not open the floodgates in theory, but it did so in practice.

And it did so with very little political risk to the Lincoln administration. Indeed, preposterous as the contraband doctrine was as a piece of law, it was also — albeit inadvertently — a masterstroke of politics; indeed, it satisfied nearly every potential theoretical and political objection while being completely unworkable in the long run. “There is often great virtue in such technical phrases in shaping public opinion,” Pierce observed. “The venerable gentleman, who wears gold spectacles and reads a conservative daily, prefers confiscation to emancipation. He is reluctant to have slaves declared freemen but has no objection to their being declared contrabands.”

The system was eminently practical in other terms. Regiments needed labor: extra hands to cook meals, wash clothes and dig latrines. When black men and women were willing to do these things, whites were happy not to ask inconvenient questions — not the first or the last time that the allure of cheap labor would trump political principles in America.

Blacks were contributing to the Union cause in larger ways. Not just at Fort Monroe but also throughout the South they provided Northerners with valuable intelligence and expert guidance. When Lincoln’s master spy, Allan Pinkerton, traveled undercover through the Confederacy, he wrote, “My best source of information was the colored men. . . . I mingled freely with them, and found them ever ready to answer questions and to furnish me with every fact which I desired to possess.” They were often the only friends the Yankees encountered as they groped their way anxiously through hostile territory.

Just as influential was what did not happen: the terrible moment — long feared among whites — when slaves would rise up and slaughter their masters. It soon became apparent from the behavior of the contrabands that the vast majority of slaves did not want vengeance: they simply wanted to be free and to enjoy the same rights and opportunities as other Americans. Many were even ready to share in the hardships and dangers of the war. Millions of white Americans realized they did not actually have to fear a bloodbath if the slaves were suddenly set free. This awareness in itself was a revolution.

Most important, though, was the revolution in the minds of the slaves themselves. Within little more than a year, the stream of a few hundred contrabands at Fort Monroe became a river of tens — probably even hundreds — of thousands. They “flocked in vast numbers — an army in themselves — to the camps of the Yankees,” a Union chaplain wrote. “The arrival among us of these hordes was like the oncoming of cities.”

When Lincoln finally unveiled the Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862, he framed it in Butleresque terms, not as a humanitarian gesture but as a stratagem of war.On the September day of Lincoln’s edict, a Union colonel ran into William Seward, the president’s canny secretary of state, on the street in Washington and took the opportunity to congratulate him on the administration’s epochal act.

Seward snorted. “Yes,” he said, “we have let off a puff of wind over an accomplished fact.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Seward?” the officer asked.

“I mean,” the secretary replied, “that the Emancipation Proclamation was uttered in the first gun fired at Sumter, and we have been the last to hear it.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This article is adapted from "1861: The Civil War Awakening," by Adam Goodheart (agoodheart2@washcoll.edu), published by Knopf this month.

Posted on the Hampton University Web Site
Emancipation Oak

The Emancipation Oak stands near the entrance of the Hampton University campus and is a lasting symbol of the university’s rich heritage and perseverance.

During the Civil War, Union General Benjamin F. Butler’s “contraband of war” decision at Fort Monroe in 1861 changed the fates of many African-American slaves, enabling hundreds to reach freedom behind Union lines. Although previously forbidden an education by Virginia law, the rising number of “contrabands” camped in the area prompted the establishment of schools for those freedmen who exhibited “a great thirst for knowledge”.

The peaceful shade of the young oak served as the first classroom for newly freed men and women, eager for an education. Mrs. Mary Peake, daughter of a freed colored woman and a Frenchman, conducted the first lessons taught under the oak located on the University’s campus. Classes continued with the The Butler School, which was constructed in 1863 next to the oak.

One day in 1863, the members of the Virginia Peninsula’s black community gathered to hear a prayer answered. The Emancipation Oak was the site of the first Southern reading of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, an act which accelerated the demand for African-American education.

With limbs sprawling over a hundred feet in diameter, the Emancipation oak is designated as one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society.

Cornel West on The 'Brokeness' of the 2-Party System

2011-04-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

I have annoyed friends and family many times with my opinions about the urgency of the Green Party as an alternative to the feckless Democrats for communities of color in cities like Los Angeles. Don't take my word for it. See below a brief video and my unofficial transcription of Prof. Cornel West's reply to a taunt by journalist Tavis Smiley on CSPAN that "we ain't got nowhere to go." West speaks in his unique blend of Ivy-League scholar and country preacher on the "brokenness" of the two-party system much more eloquently than I.

TAVIS SMILEY: "We ain't got nowhere to go. What you gonna do, Doc?"

CORNEL WEST: "Bear witness, brother. That's all you can do in your life: tell the truth and fight for justice."

TAVIS SMILEY: "How would you know who to vote for?"

CORNEL WEST: "Well ... it depends ... we got two years now. You see, the thing is now is this. It is very clear that the two-party system is part of the brokenness that we're talking about. We've got both parties that are dominated by the same interests -- corporate big banking. You've got ordinary citizens -- different political, ideological, racial groups feeling relatively powerless. Relatively impotent. Now, that can be the makings of a crypto-fascism if we don't begin to come to terms with it.

But on the other hand it also means ... the Tea Party, brothers and sisters, they're going to become more and more upset with the Establishment in the Republican Party because the business interests and their populist interests will begin to be more and more in tension.

And at the same time, Barack Obama, masterful, eloquent, charismatic ... in his language. In his policies ... you can't bring in Geithner and Summers and claim that you're building on the legacy of Martin King.

Martin died for sanitation workers. He died because he sided with poor babies in Vietnam against American occupation. He was anti-militarism. He was anti-imperialism. He was against the American empire in terms of its presence around the world undercutting what he thought to be certain principles. But all Martin could do was bear witness. That's why when he died 75% of Americans were against him. 55% of Black people were against him. 'Cause he was too ... loving. When you love poor people that much, when you love working people that much, that makes you the freest man in the country or the freest woman in the country. But you are also the biggest threat to both the Republican and Democratic parties.

9to5 Regional Leadership Conference

2011-03-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

Dear Special Friends of Peace & Justice,

This is it. This is the fight of our lifetimes. Working families are fighting for their lives in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. This war on workers is not being waged on the other side of the world, but right here in Santa Clara County, California. More than 400 Santa Clara County workers continue to face abusive misclassification as "dependent contractors".

Each year, the Bay Area Chapter of 9to5, National Association of Working Women convenes a public leadership conference to highlight changes needed for family friendly workplaces. Click the picture below to view a 6-minute video about issues at our upcoming conference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFX_dS0afcs

What:

Changing the Workplace, Changing the World
Leadership Conference

Welcome:

Erik Larsen, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

Keynote Address:

Kim Bobo, Executive Director and founder of Chicago’s Interfaith Worker Justice Center

Special Luncheon Guest:

Sally Lieber, Former Speaker Pro Tempore California State Assembly

Presenters:

Brandy Davis, Labor Project for Working Families
Peter Woiwode, California Partnership
Tiffany Crain, Young Workers United

When and Where:

2302 Zanker Road, San Jose, CA – Second Floor
San Jose, CA 95131
Saturday, April 2, 2011
8:30 AM

Noted community organizer, author and workers' rights advocate Kim Bobo will address 9to5’s 7th annual leadership conference, "Changing the Workplace, Changing the World", in San Jose. Bobo is Executive Director and founder of Chicago’s Interfaith Worker Justice Center, the nation’s largest network of people of faith engaging in local and national actions to improve wages, benefits, and conditions for workers, especially those in the Low-wage economy. She is co-author of "Organizing for Social Change", a widely used manual for organizers, and of "Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of American Workers are Not Getting Paid and What We Can Do About It."

As I write this, it appears the State of California is headed for, yet another, budget meltdown. Join us for a day of workshops and discussions about how to fight for California's working families.

More Info:
408-2066-7992
http://9to5.org/local/california/RLC

9to5 Bay Area, National Association of Working Women
2302 Zanker Road
San Jose, CA 95131

We really need your support, now more than ever.

What can we celebrate on Earth Day?

2011-03-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

It is less that a month until Earth Day comes again. I hope to have my Green Talk column in my local Morgan Hill Times then and have been trying to find a way to write something that is both new and positive. The more I consider the task, the harder it becomes.

The 1st Earth Day was a time of great hope. It appeared that a new future was upon us, one that promised to repair the damage we had already done to this earth. There seemed to be a determination to ensure that we would stop destroying the environment because, in the long run, that meant we would be destroying our own civilization.

In retrospect, that promise has never been fulfilled, even though some hare working legislators managed to codify it's intent. We might now have the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, but we no longer have the hope and determination. Rather than pushing forward toward a better world, we are fighting a defensive war against an activist movement that would roll back these laws and defund or eliminate the EPA. It leave me asking "What went wrong?"

America has always had a sense that it was good to live small. Many continue to find their inspiration on the edge of Thoreau's Walden Pond. Not as many know and appreciate the Sand County Almanac of Aldo Leopold and have not considered his view of a land ethic.

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for).

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.

Leopold wrote this in 1949. Between then and Earth Day, we had the chance to read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. That gave us the truth about the problems we were causing and brought about the ban on DDT. Still, within the past month, we had people testifying to Congress that Carson was wrong and that the ban on DDT caused untold deaths from Malaria.

By the time that the 1st Earth Day arrived in 1970, it was a national movement, fired up by student enthusiasm. Not partisan, like today's discussion, there were 2 co-chairs: Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson (Dem) and California Representative Pete McCloskey (Rep). But that spirit of working together soon vanished. By 2003, they were calling for a re-birth of the movement.

A letter sent March 17 to more than 4,000 student leaders urged them to help rebuild a constituency for the environment. It suggests organizing events in their schools and communities, and sending a delegate to a national student conference on politics and the environment in September.

Despite war, the sour economy, and threats of terrorism, the letter said, "There is no more terrifying legacy than a changed climate or an epidemic of extinction."

The letter was signed by Mr. Nelson. Mr. McCloskey, Mr. (Dennis) Hayes (former Stanford student body president), and Stewart Udall, a former congressman and Department of the Interior secretary.

Not much of that happened either.

So, I am asking you to tell me what went wrong. I have my own ideas. It has to do with our increased urbanization and detachment from the land. It has to do with the pace of events as we lurch from catastrophe to catastrophe, from earthquake / tsunami to civil wars in remote countries to the edge of nuclear catastrophe all in a week of 24 hr news. It may now be exacerbated by the ease with which communication takes place online and with some electronic device to show or mask you true meanings.

So, readers, tell me why you think we are where we are, fighting now to prevent an epidemic of extinction.

Putting ecology first.

2011-03-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

I promised someone yesterday that I would address the question they raised in response to one of my tweets.

Ecology loses when Greens first address creating a non-violent, just, democratic world.

The question was that of why this would be true. We have a small rat terrier who is an escape artist and took up my time last night… bringing him back home and fixing yet another pathway out of the yard… That may be a good example of how pressing needs transform priorities.

Now that I have started on this, it is not a very easy task and I admit that it will take more than one post. The short answer that I gave was "You can't do the rest w/o working in ecological terms." Not everyone would agree with that. Even among those who have thought seriously about ecology, there is a striking difference in approach. This is perhaps best understood by contrasting the ideas of Aldo Leopold and Murray Bookchin.

I have written about Leopold before, but not Bookchin. In Post-Scarcity Anarchisms, Bookchin places the root cause of our problems strictly in the deep soils of capitalism.

The notion that man must dominate nature emerges directly from the domination of man by man… But it was not until organic community relation … dissolved into market relationships that the planet itself was reduced to a resource for exploitation. This centuries-long tendency finds its most exacerbating development in modern capitalism.

Many, if not most, Greens would agree with Bookchin. However much he uses the concepts of ecology, Bookchin still relies on the social, economic organization of man to shape the rest of our relationships to the world. This leads him to develop the idea of Communalism… again a term that Greens should pay attention to… but that is a form of libertarian socialism.

Leopold, writing just before the time when Bookchin was formulating his ideas, defined what he called a "land ethic." He begins by recognizing that humans are essentially a member of the biotic community. He saw the problem as an ethical one and that humans were in need of evolving their ethical relationships to a new communal future. "

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: the the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for).

Maybe the difference comes from whether or not humans are granted free will or are pre-determined by their social structure, as Bookchin and all of the others who derived their thinking from Marx, seem to profess. If Bookchin is right, that we build our communal future to change human ethics, then I don't see clearly that there is a way out. However, Leopold's view that we need to evolve a new ethics, an extension of the process that moved us from treating other people as chattel to recognizing that "all men are created equal" gives guidance as to how we create the new society that Bookchin wanted.

Maybe my analysis is too simplistic. It probably is. The goal of creating a "non-violent, just, democratic world" seems to belong more in the realm of political action than ethics. I just don't see how we meet that goal without our actions being informed by an ecological consciousness, a new land ethic to use Leopold's term.

What happens in a post Fukushima world?

2011-03-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

I found two posts today that addressed the nuclear power situation and all of the considerations that arise after the Fukushima reactor failures in Japan. Let me change that wording, the human failures in dealing with a potential catastrophic technology.

Ralph Nader, whose OpEd I found thanks to a tweet from Marnie Glickman, writes very directly about the need to prevent another Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima situation. He does a very good job building an economic case against any more nuclear facilities, based on the costs will all be borne by the public either as rate payers or as tax payers, that that is slanted more to the latter.

He then goes on to list the things we need to do if one is planned for our back yard.

* 1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.

* 2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can't buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can't buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don't stay in business.

* 3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn't required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

* 4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.

Nader provides a good good set of talking point for being anti-nuclear. He does not, however, deal with the fundamental problems that we need to resolve to eliminate the need or desire for engaging in such reckless search for solutions to problems that we may not even have.

For that, I had to turn to The Nuclear Syndrome posted by Lorna Salzman at another not mainstream media site. In fact, you have to scan down the page to find it. Salzman, like Nader who she once supported as a Green presidential candidate, has a long history of ecological activism and makes it clear that she knows just what is driving the nuclear renaissance in America.

Unless there is a clear, strong message from the American public that they are ready to cut their consumption by paying more for energy and supporting stringent mandatory energy efficiency standards, we will be outflanked by those who will raise the spectre of hardship and sacrifice if growth does not continue. If we do not reject growth, we are agreeing with them that any and all risks associated with nukes or oil or gas drilling are acceptable because these are just part of "progress", jobs and development. We need to cut to the chase: either we are willing to take the steps necessary to curtail energy use and growth, or we accede to the arguments of the nuclear power proponents. There is no other choice.

California Greens have a lot to think about. There are two major reactor site in the state: Diablo Canyon and San Onofre. There is a current effort to build a new energy park near Fresno that would be home to yet another nuclear installation. As I posted earlier, the Fresno Energy Group is actively trying to circumvent the California law that places a moratorium on new nuclear power plants until there is a solution for the problems of nuclear waste.

Are Greens going to limit themselves to being yet another, admittedly small, portion of a re-awakening anti-nuclear movement, following a path clearly laid out by Nader, or can we go beyond that with to push for a new, economic future that does not depend on tomorrows growth to pay for yesterday's excessive risk taking?

Nader outlines the actions that are necessary in any case. It is a clear way to slow down or stop future nuclear expansion. But the unique view that Greens bring to the table sounds much more like Salzman. Perpetual growth is a Ponzi scheme at best. Now is the time to stop what we have been doing and focus on a Green future.

Ecology before Earth Day

2011-03-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

Before there was an Earth Day, even before Rachel Carson described the possible Silent Spring, Aldo Leopold had a Wisconsin farm from which he wrote A Sand County Almanac. Writing in 1949, he challenged his own time.

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. Despite nearly a century of propaganda, conservation will proceeds at a snail's pace:ogress still consists largely of letterhead pieties and convention oratory. On the back forty, we still slip two steps backward for each forward stride.

The usual answer to this dilemma is "more conservation education." No one will debate this, but is it certain that only the volume of education needs stepping up? Is something lacking in the content as well?

I would urge Greens to find a copy (I found mine at the public library) and read it because it still challenges the way that we have gone about changing our future.

Why think about water now?

2011-03-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

As Grist's Dave Roberts tweeted recently to the effect that with war imminent in Libya, nuclear catastrophe in Japan and floods in the US, he wants the world to slow down so he can understand it all. So, with all of that happening, plus a good soaking rain in Morgan Hill and reservoir managers at Oroville and Shasta opening the gates for increased flow now, why am I posting about water?

March 22 has been designated World Water Day and AlterNet is marking that day by having a book release party for their new publication: Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource.

Authors take on both the good and the bad -- the impact of climate change on water resources, the threat of privatization, and the challenge of thirsty agriculture, as well as a growing grassroots water justice movement, tools for watershed literacy, and success stories in conservation and efficiency. This book is a must read for everyone concerned about the future of our planet.

Time: Event begins at 6 pm, panel discussion featuring leading environmentalists until 7 pm and party until 9 pm.

Location: Project One, 251 Rhode Island St, San Francisco CA 94103. Map

RSVP by emailing RSVP@alternet.org for a chance to win a free copy of Water Matters!

We may think that this is not pertinent, or maybe no so important in the global scheme of events, but as is the case with climate change, if we don't act now it will be too late to act when the shit hits the fan.

Hubris of technology and human error: Do we need a new nuke in Fresno?

2011-03-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

During the 2010 Senatorial Race in California, one of the Republicans running was Chuck Devore. I am so glad that he did not win. He is yet again one of those who will back up their policy with whatever number makes their case look better. In a facebook comment this week, Devore attacks environmentalists and contrasts the situation at Fukushima as being caused by an earthquake while that at Chernobyl was caused by human error. He then states that the death toll from Chernobyl was "only 50."

I am not sure where he gets his information, since the governments of Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine put the death toll in the thousands while other organizations go toward 100,000. So much for Devore's credibility. It is falling dangerously close to that of Rush Limbaugh.

The most intriguing element is that he also ignores information as to how human error contributed to the disaster at Fukushima. News analysts have always wondered why the diesel generators failed and today the news is that a worker failed to double check that the fuels tanks were full.

This is what I mean by technological hubris. We still have not been able to engineer any complex system that is immune to the effects of human error, neither failures to act as it appears to be the case here, nor failures in judgment as affected some of the Space Shuttle spectacular failures.

As the dangers continue to build in Japan, the nuclear industry in the United States are active convincing everyone, especially members of Congress, that is could never happen here. Is this because we are so smart? Because we are so careful? No, they say that it is because we do not have exposure to the scale of the earthquake / tsunami that has swamped Japan's ability to manage multiple disasters.

Even now, this is part of the justification for a new nuclear plant facility that some want to build near Fresno. Even as the reactors in Fukushima are in danger of complete meltdown, or at least the spent fuel storage tanks... not in any kind of containment... are seriously compromised... the Madera County Board of Supervisors has voted its support for the proposed new reactors. This, in spite of the fact that California law has put a moratorium on new nuclear power plants until the problem of nuclear waste disposal has been solved. Remember... those highly reactive spent fuel rods are not in any containment facility.

John Ellis's report in the Fresno Bee portrays The Fresno Energy Group as cynically planning to circumvent California's moratorium.

In December, Hutson and the group said they had found a way around the moratorium. The reactors would be characterized as parts of a water-treatment system instead of power plants.

Water on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is tainted with a variety of salts that make it unsuitable for crops. Power generated could be used to power a desalination plant.

Actually, this sounds to me like a plan hatched by the Westland Water District who understands that their land is becoming increasingly less productive due to the accumulation of salts. Economist David Zeitland has even blogged that we could save a lot of taxpayer money by buying out the entire water district and all of it's farms. That solution to Westlands' problems is significantly better than a new nuclear plant. It does not require anyone to engineer a system that is immune to human error.

The left's view of science

2011-03-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's post, I mentioned a post by Chris Mooney at desmogblog where he asks "Are liberals science deniers: now is a good time to find out". There are many ways to approach this problem. Mooney chooses to do so in the context of liberal efforts to shut down nuclear power. Is there a valid scientific rationale, or is it just a knee jerk reaction?

What Mooney does not acknowledge is that there is stream of self identified progressives who do not consider science as an important mechanism to understand our world. Most of these so called progressives are more likely to quote Noam Chomsky than anyone who actually values science. The thread from Chomsky goes directly to Howard Zinn and Glenn Greenwald.

Chomsky, very much revered by many progressives and his view on science give those acolytes permission to ignore science completely.

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can’t deal with them. The reason why physics can achieve such depth is that it restricts itself to extremely simple things, abstracted from the complexity of the world. As soon as an atom gets too complicated, maybe helium, they hand it over to chemists. When problems become too complicated for chemists, they hand it over to biologists. Biologists often hand it over to the sociologists, and they hand it over to the historians, and so on. But it’s a complicated matter: Science studies what’s at the edge of understanding, and what’s at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated. In fact even understanding insects is an extremely complicated problem in the sciences. So the actual sciences tell us virtually nothing about human affairs.

It is not likely to be the cast that liberals will "misuse" science, as is Moody's concern. It is more likely that they will ignore it.

Finding the energy to do it right.

2011-03-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

The severity of the earthquake tsunami catastrophe that struck Japan last Friday is just now being absorbed, in bits and pieces of anecdotal commentary. The idea that they were able to rescue a man from the rooftop of his home some 15 km at sea is an indication of the power of the tsunami and his own good fortune. Those of us with friends or relatives (my wife Rumiko's entire family) in Japan can only worry if they were in the north or breathe a silent sigh of relief if, as with Rumiko's family, they are all in the Tokyo or Osaka areas.

Still, the horror of this event is unfolding as we watch not only the search, rescue and recovery efforts, but also the effort to prevent a complete nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plants. The facilities there suffered major damage and were not able to maintain cooling. In a final effort to prevent a Chernobyl scale event, the operators have been pumping large volumes of sea water on to the reactors to cool them, but in doing so have rendered these facilities permanently unusable.

It is inevitable that the United States must re-examine it's own posture regarding not only the future of nuclear power, but also the management of the 104 nuclear power plants already operating here. Perhaps the best assessment that I have seen, and every news source has given at least one, is the one that Joe Romm and Richard C produced for CNN. The sober assessment is that "The U.S. government and nuclear industry must take new actions to ensure that nuclear power is safe for the American public."

Four of the 104 nuclear power plants in the US are located in California. Most of the attention has been given to the 2 reactors at Diablo Canyon. It is right on the coast and was constructed with full knowledge that it was close to 3 active faults including the San Andreas fault. Recently, a 4th fault has been discovered under the ocean just off the Diablo Canyon site. There is risk. No one denies this, but we have always been told that the risks are know, have been quantified, and that the Diablo Canyon plants have been designed to be able to withstand such a risk.

The lesson that I take from Fukushima is that we are not really good at quantifying risk. There is too much pressure to down play risk so as to not panic a public with scant technical knowledge and many fears.

The Green Party, and especially the Green Party of California has always taken an anti-nuclear stance. Some of the opposition is merely emotional, but mostly it is based on a sober risk assessment and the knowledge that there are better alternatives which can meet our energy needs. As Romm noted in the item linked above, the one time cost advantage for nuclear is no longer true.

I don’t think that we have yet absorbed the lessons of Fukushima. There is a hubris, sometimes nationalistic, that allows us to say that we have planned for all contingencies. If you listen to those who talk about Diablo Canyon site this week, they make the point that it was over designed to withstand the largest possible quake on the nearby faults. The same was said about Fukushima, and yet we did not truly understand just how great a quake was possible there.

The other lesson that we should learn, but again one that no one is talking about, is that there is a risk in putting so much emphasis on large scale, single site capabilities. Yes, it may be economic when all is well, but the economic consequences are very bad when all is not well. The argument for a distributed system with multiple generation technologies: solar, wind, wave, co-generation, etc. makes the system much less prone to the effects of the loss of a single site. This would make the United State more secure. It would make the US economy more robust and better able to absorb shocks, whether from single site failure or from conflict fed spikes in the prices for Middle East Oil.

And, just as importantly, the economics of nuclear have never considered the health effects of the entire process system from mining to transportation to processing to the storage of nuclear waste. At each step, we need to understand the long range effects before we commit to increased nuclear power plants, and the users of that technology should bear the cost.

It is also clear that all efforts to analyze the situation in Japan and to develop a sound US policy for the future will be met with equally political diatribes. Just read the comments to Chris Mooney's question: Are Liberals Science Deniers: Now is a good time to find out.

Follow the science for then entire process system. That is what the science of ecology tells us to do. Follow the economics that the science says is true. I don’t think that you will end up supporting nuclear or coal or any other fossil fuel.

More than any other