Whatever it takes

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 ????

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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