Street Theater Politics

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.