Documentaries and the Truth We Can Still Tell (But for How Long?)

Documentaries and the Truth We Can Still Tell (But for How Long?)
by Vivian Norris, Phd, Based in Paris-Globalization Studies
Posted: 06/13/11 09:19 AM ET

There may be an awful lot of lawyer jokes out there but for more and more documentary filmmakers, the legal challenges they are up against when trying to tell a story are no laughing matter. Forty years after the initial publishing of The Pentagon Papers, the full truth about Vietnam is finally being released. Daniel Ellsberg has stated that what he did back then as an investigative journalist was actually legal. Today, post-9/11 and Patriot Act, not only would it be illegal, it would be much more difficult to find any published information at all. Some information has indeed disappeared completely. And for those wonderfully stubborn souls who keep searching for the truth and trying to get it out there in front of audiences, they often find themselves, especially in the US, attacked by layer upon layer of lawsuits funded by corporations with deep pockets.

Take the case of Bananas! and the hell the Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten and his producer went through when putting on the screen the stories of workers who were "allegedly" suffering from infertility due to exposure to pesticides while employed by the biggest fruit company in the world. The well-known legal story of Joe Berlinger's never-ending battles with his film about Chevron's pollution and the health affects on people in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Crude, overshadowed his message at times. And some turn to fiction to avoid the lawsuits by making feature films such as Michael Clayton which refer to the wrongs of companies such as Monsanto. And the list seems to be growing longer. Documentary filmmakers have enough problems trying to find the money to get their films made, but adding to that the mountains of legal bills and the time-consuming reality of defending oneself and one's film from being sued, one imagines the corporations are hoping that the filmmakers will back down and their docs will disappear.

But they won't.

And that was obvious by the lineup at the Sex, Docs and Rock and Roll Festival and Market in Sheffield in the UK this past week. The screenings were full of both industry folks and regular folks and the conversations in the pubs afterwards showed that documentary film attacking serious subjects is alive and well. But will many of these docs go on to have a life on television and in cinemas?

In Europe, Asia and other parts of the world independent documentaries can find a home, on a national broadcaster, but when we hear the stories of the thousands of indie docs applying for small pools of funds, the only reason they end up being made is because of the passion of the filmmakers.
People across the globe are indignant about everything from the deadly silence on Fukushima to the reality behind the BP disaster and how our health is being affected, and many recent documentary films are showing us why we should be. I argue we need these factual-based programs more than ever before and the stories they tell are more urgent and more dramatic than ever before. The subjects they deal with affect our lives, our children, our planet.

More foundations, film institutes, equity funds as well as more and less well known production companies such as Participant, are supporting "social issue" campaign-driven documentaries. But what can they do when a film they are supporting is attacked by a company which has endless cash to throw at some of the toughest law firms around?

They tell their stories anyway.

Brands are looking to documentary films as a way to help improve their corporate social responsibility image, and perhaps at times there are good "fits" between a company and the message in a doc beyond what might be considered to be "green-washing". But often this is not the case, take, for example, one doc about pollution and climate change released last year in France was supported by the same oil companies which seemed to be causing the problems being confronted in the film. The press exposed this hypocrisy and it lasted all of one week in the cinemas.

Taking this idea of brand support for a documentary to the extreme is Morgan Spurlock's Pom: The Greatest Film Ever Sold in which the filmmaker literally brands not only almost every scene in the film, he ends up branding his own body by wearing a suit covered by logos. We are bombarded by advertising more now than ever before, and the effects this is having on us and especially on our children, is disturbing. Spurlock travels to Sao Paolo in his film to show us what happens when people become fed up with swimming in Consumerstan, they simply ban advertising in all public spaces... the problem is, for much of the world, the privatization of what was once public has reached turbo speed.

How do you feel about visiting a national park and having your escape from it all experience sponsored by companies which want a piece of your down time? Would you sacrifice your integrity, or that of your family and community's common grounds to Starbucks, Wells Fargo and Coca Cola in order to keep services being cut because of the financial crisis? What about your children's school? A recent debate on the BBC over advertising in the classroom seemed quaint compared to what school districts are up against in the US. Spurlock's documentary shows one district in Florida in which administrators seem to be looking for ways to sell out to keep their schools able to offer the same things they did pre-crisis.

Have we already sold our souls to be branded? Have we started down that slippery slope, never to return to some kind of private sphere in which we remain protected from someone wanting to sell us something? Or have we all become as Roseanne Barr recently wrote in her magnificent diatribe about the media industry which is one of the most empowering pieces about the industry ever written. (Entitled "Fame's a Bitch, It's Hard to Handle Then It Drives You Nuts") in which she makes it extremely clear that there are no powerful people in television "... unless they work for an ad company or a market-study group. Those are the people who decide what gets on air and what doesn't."

And though this is not always the case in much of Europe, with its so-called bans on advertising, especially for children, and with its subsidies etc., it is a warning that if the private channels (or public channels which are acting like private channels, or yes, the monopolies owned by folks like Berlusconi or the near monopolies of Mr. Murdoch), don't watch out, there will be no truth told by documentary films, nor on the news, or very little of it and not the bits we need to know most. And we will have to either throw the television out the window and lose what could be one of the greatest most powerful forces of educational, entertaining good ever invented (though it seems the man who invented the television would not allow one in his home!).

Barr finds solace in the same words that documentary filmmakers trying to get the truth out there can find some comfort in, from Sun Tzu's Art of War, "He who cares the most, wins" -- but it does not pay the legal bills.

I agree with BBC's Nick Fraser that filmmakers should not risk their lives to make a film, and we spoke of a friend of his, the French filmmaker, Christian Poveda, who was killed when he returned to El Salvador to do a follow up on his powerful doc, Vida Loca. But perhaps that is indeed what they will find themselves doing as they work to tell the truth and penetrate the layers of corporate protection (someone please explain to me again why in the United States corporations are still given the same rights as human beings, in fact were given those rights before African Americans and women were?!). Why should filmmakers have to choose between life and truth?

If we lose the independence of the documentary voice, we have lost our freedom to know, to be informed, to look for and find knowledge which can help us as human beings, parts of communities, and as citizens of a world which needs us to know and to want to be curious about it.

Documentaries can be wonderful ways to lose ourselves in reality, not virtual reality, not reality tv, but "real" reality; they are not only enjoyable to watch, but because they are based on these facts, force us to question when we are fed lies. Good documentary filmmaking preserves our common human accomplishments and documents the natural world and ways of life (which in some cases sadly is disappearing. See a great doc about disappearing cowboys and shepherds in Montana called Sweetwater).

We don't want to find that documentary filmmaking has become extinct, or worse, that the truth is now inaccessible, privately owned by a tiny elite who can afford all those lawyers. I would hate to think that if we do not support documentary filmmakers, or worse, ignore their work, because it challenges us, that they may one day stop challenging us at all and will disappear from the party. If we, the audience, do not care, then nobody will. We need to notice. Because documentaries tell us who we are, what our world is about, and give us that Truth. Without this, you might as well throw your television out the window.

[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE]
  

Jim Rogers Interview

What the White House Garden Would Look Like If They Followed Their Own Ag Policy

   I got this from OrganicConsumers.org. It references Kitchen Gardeners International, but I was unable to find these illustrations on that website.

What the White House Garden Would Look Like If They Followed Their Own Ag Policy

Thanks to Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International, a Maine-based nonprofit, for putting together these great visual aids. He writes:

In a nutshell, I was really inspired by the diversity and nutritiousness of the crops planted in the White House kitchen garden this spring and thought it would be eye-opening - not to mention jaw-dropping - to see what the White House garden would look like if it were planted to reflect the relative importance of the crops that our tax dollars are actually supporting.

You'll see that there's very little resemblance between America's Kitchen Garden and our "Subsidy Garden"

[GO TO ORGANIC CONSUMERS WEBSITE]

Food Mill

   The food mill arrived yesterday. Today I went to the produce stand and spent most of the afternoon in the  kitchen. My taste for hot pepper sauce has been ramping up over the past year or so. I figured it was time to learn to make it myself and it would be a great project for the new food mill.

   A quick aside here... why make a condiment that I could find in a multitude of varieties in any grocery store? There are a number of reasons, but for me the primary reason is to be more connected to my own food supply. I appreciate knowing exactly what goes into what I am eating beyond a list of ingredients that include chemicals that I have to look up what they are and how to pronounce their names and can't find in any store. I like knowing (and being able to control) just how much sugar, salt, fat, etc. is going into my food (and my body, and my family's bodies). It's rewarding to learn how to make things like condiments and maybe even tweak the recipe to make it better. I am able to use fresh ingredients, know their origin, and deal with waste responsibly (i.e. chicken food and compost). On top of all of that, by doing it myself I take a lot of excess out of the equation such as the processing plant, warehousing, distribution, and advertising. Ultimately, I am able to produce a superior product that is healthier for me, my family, and the planet, and save money. The downside is that I have to take some time out every now and then and do it. It's worth it to me.

   Back to today's project: hot pepper sauce! The produce stand had approximately seven pounds of various peppers on the discount table, so I bought them all, along with a couple heads of garlic (they were 2 for $1 and I know we'll use it). At home I cleaned the peppers, cut them up, and started trying to process them through the food mill. I thought I could process them through the coarse plate and then process the mash a second time through a more refined plate. It quickly became evident that I had not properly prepared the peppers for the food mill.

   I decided to run the chopped peppers through the food processor first, then through the food mill. That worked out well, though it added a step I had hoped to eliminate. Once all the peppers (and a couple cloves of garlic) had been reduced to liquid, I added an (approximately) equal amount of vinegar and seven teaspoons of salt. After stirring the solution well, I gave the spoon a conservative taste test and was very happy with the result! I brought the sauce to a gradual boil while I sterilized some pint jars and lids.

   I ultimately ended up with five pints of hot pepper sauce. Every recipe I read said that it needs to ferment for at least two weeks, up to three months (or more). At this point the jars have cooled and the vinegar and pepper juice seems to have separated, but a quick shake appears to solve the separation.

   I'll follow up on the pepper sauce experiment as it progresses. I think I might try steaming them first next time. I am really looking forward to making spaghetti sauce when the local tomatoes start coming in!

Regulators Knew World's Best-Selling Herbicide Causes Problems, New Report Finds

   Sadly, this doesn't surprise me at all...

Roundup Birth Defects: Regulators Knew World's Best-Selling Herbicide Causes Problems, New Report Finds
Lucia Graves
lucia@huffingtonpost.com
First Posted: 06/ 7/11 07:48 PM ET Updated: 06/ 8/11 05:36 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- Industry regulators have known for years that Roundup, the world's best-selling herbicide produced by U.S. company Monsanto, causes birth defects, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The report, "Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?" found regulators knew as long ago as 1980 that glyphosate, the chemical on which Roundup is based, can cause birth defects in laboratory animals.

But despite such warnings, and although the European Commission has known that glyphosate causes malformations since at least 2002, the information was not made public.

Instead regulators misled the public about glyphosate's safety, according to the report, and as recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, the German government body dealing with the glyphosate review, told the European Commission that there was no evidence glyphosate causes birth defects.

The report comes months after researchers found that genetically-modified crops used in conjunction Roundup contain a pathogen that may cause animal miscarriages. After observing the newly discovered organism back in February, Don Huber, an emeritus professor at Purdue University, wrote an open letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack requesting a moratorium on deregulating crops genetically altered to be immune to Roundup, which are commonly called Roundup Ready crops.

In the letter, Huber also commented on the herbicide itself, saying: "It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders."

Although glyphosate was originally due to be reviewed in 2012, the Commission decided late last year not to bring the review forward, instead delaying it until 2015. The chemical will not be reviewed under more stringent, up-to-date standards until 2030.

"Our examination of the evidence leads us to the conclusion that the current approval of glyphosate and Roundup is deeply flawed and unreliable," wrote the report authors in their conclusion. "What is more, we have learned from experts familiar with pesticide assessments and approvals that the case of glyphosate is not unusual.

"They say that the approvals of numerous pesticides rest on data and risk assessments that are just as scientifically flawed, if not more so," the authors added. "This is all the more reason why the Commission must urgently review glyphosate and other pesticides according to the most rigorous and up-to-date standards."

[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE]

Spring Cleaning!

   The weather on Sunday and Monday was warm and sunny. The locals news even reported that the weather was the warmest it had been since September. It’s been a long winter…

   As much as I would have liked to load up the backpacks and spend the weekend with the family out in the wilderness, there were priorities at home. The wife got her serger back from the shop a little while back and her mom brought us the table that goes with her new sewing machine just last week. We finally got all of the files transferred from my wife’s old desktop PC and were ready to take it apart and rearrange some things. We moved the nice computer desk from the living room to the office and donated the desk from the office to the local thrift store. The new desktop set up is using the most efficient  components from each of the old set ups. Now that the entire family has graduated to laptops, I expect the desktop probably won't see a lot of use.

   Where the desk was in the living room we set up the sewing table, craft table from the office, and other crafty stuff scattered throughout the house. While we were at it we rearranged the rest of the living room furniture. Now the office is back to being a dedicated office and my wife has a functional craft space in the main living area.

   In the course of all of the moving and rearranging we were able to do a lot of spring cleaning. We opened all the windows and cleaned as we went along. We also thinned out a lot of stuff to donate, freecycle, and trade at the used bookstore.

   One reason we weren’t able to take a trip was because I had a work meeting scheduled for Sunday afternoon. While I did that my wife went out and picked up some tomato and pepper plants for the garden. We have a few starts from the heirloom seeds, but with the season getting such a late start we agreed we needed something further along if we were going to have much of a harvest. She also cleaned up the kitchen!

   After getting the office and living room rearranged we decided to focus on a few organization issues. The first part of Monday we spent running errands. We traded in some old books at the used bookstore (I picked up a 1st Edition copy of Fawn Brodie’s, Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History. Inside was an old postcard from Monticello the previous owner had been using for a bookmark!), returned and picked up some things at the library, dropped off another load of stuff at the thrift store, and found a small bookshelf for the living room and a large bookshelf for the office at the local consignment shop.

   After cleaning the shelves and setting them up at home, we set out for the second round of errands. We stopped by the post office to mail a bunch of kid’s videos back to the friend who loaned them to us. We had a gift card for a big-box store, so we went in seeking some organizational help. We found some bed risers to create storage space under our son’s bed, magazine holders, a file box for our son’s extensive collection of Lego building instructions and magazines, and a set of stainless steel measuring cups to replace our plastic ones. After tax we had $0.31 left on the card. Dang near perfect! From there we stocked up on some things at Costco (most noteworthy – Costco had recycled bath tissue for the first time! We’re set for months now).

   When we got home we put the food away, put our son’s bed on risers, reorganized the books and magazines, and I spent some time rewiring and organizing the office.

   Today the weather took a turn. It was cold and wet. I made a run to the butcher store and produce stand and then spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen. Our most recent order from Amazon arrived this afternoon as well.

   I may have to go back to the produce stand tomorrow and get something to run through the food mill…

Charging Stations

   In the course of rearranging and reorganizing over the past couple days, one thing we needed to deal with was our charging stations. These are areas we've designated for charging our phones, game controllers, laptops, etc. (I know, I know, people think I want to drag humanity backwards two-hundred years. The truth is, I just want to take the real wisdom and truth from the past and apply it to the wisdom and truth of the present. I'm all for technology, innovation, and efficiency, just not at the expense of ourselves or Ma Nature. But I digress...) We have tried to set up convenient locations to charge things without having vampire power constantly running up our bill.

   We have a HYmini with four small solar chargers (the solar chargers our ours, the HYmini is actually borrowed, but that's a whole other story). We can charge our phones and anything else that has a USB power connector. That sits in one of the south-facing windows in the living room and usually works great for one phone at a time.

   For game controllers and/or two or more phones, we have a single power strip (with a surge protector) with all the various chargers plugged into it. The catch is, you have to remember to turn the power strip on when you want to charge something (not too difficult) and then remember to turn it off when you're done (a lot more difficult, it turns out).

   While reorganizing I was faced with the question of what to do with a one-foot tall, light-up Las Vegas  sign. The sign is plastic and a little tacky -- it lights up just like the real thing -- but my wife and I got married in Vegas and this was a wedding present from some dear friends who were there for the celebration. Be it what it may, it will always possess a place in our hearts and our living space.

   How do we remember to turn off the power strip when stuff is done charging?

   ...and where should we display the Vegas/wedding sign?

   *BLAM*

   Two questions solve themselves. I set the Vegas sign up on the charging station power strip so that it lights up and flashes whenever the power strip is on. Testing so far has proved the solution to be solid. Don't get me wrong -- the Vegas sign holds sentimental value that continues to make it a part of our lives. It just happens to also make a great visual cue that can't be missed.

   Re-wiring the office / music room / studio will be a whole other story...

Coinstar and Amazon

   I recently discovered that Coinstar machines offer eCertificates for Amazon.com. This will come off as a shameless plug since I've recently set up advertising with Amazon. I suppose it is in a way.

   Whatever. It's not like Amazon or Coinstar are giving me any money to post this. Take it for what it's worth...

   So I've known that I could take change to a Coinstar machine and get a gift card or eCert with no fee. Some years back my son and I began collecting coins. The family saves all of our change and my son and I go through it looking for coins we don't already have. As a result, we end up with a large stockpile of change every so often. I used to take it to Coinstar and get an iTunes certificate to buy music and such. At the beginning of the year we just held onto the change because we were committed to getting out of debt, but it turns out most banks (and credit unions) charge a fee to take change that has to be counted. So the change just piled up. Then I stumbled on the Amazon eCertificate.

   The wife and I compared wish lists.

   I got a bag for my new laptop. It has all the features of any good laptop bag, but also includes two concealed-carry compartments with elastic-band holsters. It's nice being able to carry everything I need for work or just out and about in one bag. Plus it looks pretty damn good.

   We also got some stuff for the kitchen. We are trying to eliminate as much plastic in the kitchen as possible, so my wife picked out some Pyrex storage/cooking containers. We got a baking mat to cut down on parchment paper waste. We've been getting decent herbs from the garden (the oregano not only kept going through the winter, it's going gangbusters now), so we picked up  an herb grinding mill to help with that.

   My favorite item should arrive tomorrow. I've had my eye on a food mill ever since canning spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, and ketchup last fall. I can't wait to try this one out and report back. Hopefully it will make the processing of all those tomatoes (and more) much quicker and easier!

   The past couple days have been very productive. I hope to have a post on that in the next 24 hours...

Climate Change

   This article appeared this morning. I'm going to tie it and article I posted a couple days ago because I think it's important to point out just how tragically our government is dropping the ball on this one.

   See: Wind and Solar Opponents Use Bureaucracy To Stall Projects

   Here's today's article from climate scientist Heidi Cullen:


The C-Word
Posted: 06/ 3/11 09:06 AM ET

My phone tends to ring a lot more when the weather is bad. I often get calls from reporters and producers who usually ask me the same question a bunch of different ways. "Is this global warming?" "Is climate change to blame?" "Is the weather getting worse?"

These are big -- almost existential -- questions. I suspect they are a polite way of asking, "Is this our fault?"

Climate scientists approach the question a little differently. We want to test how global warming shifts the odds of a severe weather event. Just like medical researchers do with cigarette smoking and lung cancer. In fact, this line of climate research comes straight out of epidemiology. In essence, we're doing autopsies on extreme weather events to find out what made them so bad-ass.

Depending on the type of extreme weather event, my answer can be short or long, straightforward or complicated. Keep in mind, all weather is now born into an environment that is warmer and moister because of man-made greenhouse gas pollution. But we don't always know what influences (man-made or natural) will win out on any given day.

Events like droughts, wildfires, heat waves and heavy downpours get my short answer. We know they are going to become more frequent, more intense, and last longer. In fact, we can already see this playing out in historical data. (For a complete overview, check out the "Global Climate Change Impacts in the US", as well as some newly published research summarized here.)

Tornadoes get the long answer. Will they become more frequent, more intense? Will Tornado Alley get bigger? Will the season last longer? Jeff Masters and Andrew Freedman have both done a great job laying out the state of the research.

The bottom line is that two of the key ingredients that go into making a tornado are expected to change as a result of global warming -- water vapor (moisture in the atmosphere) and wind shear (changing wind speed and direction with height). Thanks in part to warmer oceans, water vapor has already increased about 4% and it will continue to increase as the planet warms -- providing more fuel for storms. But wind shear may decrease and that could mean fewer tornadoes. So which influence wins out -- increasing water vapor or decreasing wind shear? We don't know yet.

But even though we don't have all the answers -- and maybe never will -- we do know enough to act. And that is really the bigger point, the one I try to bring home when the phone rings. The recent National Research Council's "America's Climate Choices" report advised Congress that we know enough to get started on preparing for climate change and preventing the most severe consequences, and we need to get started right away. Almost anything we do to protect ourselves in the future from this hotter world we're creating, will also protect us right now from many of the extremes Mother Nature throws at us. We can't afford to wait.

Yet, despite this recent report, and despite all we do know about climate change, the topic has become the C-word in Washington, D.C. Just as the term "global warming" fell out of favor, the term "climate change" is now one that few in our nation's capital dare bring up in conversation, much less in legislation. Budgets for climate research have been threatened and now a nominee for Commerce Secretary is garnering opposition in large part because of his stance on environmental issues, including global climate change.

As the people of Joplin, Missouri begin the slow, painful process of rebuilding their lives -- a new wave of extremes is making headlines. A state of emergency was declared in Massachusetts on Wednesday after rare and powerful tornadoes ripped through the city of Springfield and smaller towns nearby. At the same time, long-standing temperature records fell as a wall of heat blanketed the eastern half of the country -- Washington, D.C. set a new daily record high of 98°F -- busting the old record that dated back to 1895. Hurricane season also started this week and forecasters expect it to be busier than usual. And I'm here ready for the phone to ring again, so that I can tell you one more time that if we do nothing to adapt and reduce our greenhouse gas pollution, things will only get worse... and yes, it will be our fault.

Heidi Cullen is a climate scientist at Climate Central (www.climatecentral.org) -- an independent, non-profit journalism and research organization. She is also a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University and the author of The Weather of the Future.

   [READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE]


   Check out the page Heidi referenced in paragraph five. It's worth a look.

   Contact President Obama

   Contact your representatives

   Contact the senate

Dangerous Toxins From Genetically Modified Plants Found in Women and Fetuses

Institute for Responsible Technology...

When U.S. regulators approved Monsanto’s genetically modified “Bt” corn, they knew it would add a deadly poison into our food supply. That’s what it was designed to do. The corn’s DNA is equipped with a gene from soil bacteria called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) that produces the Bt-toxin. It’s a pesticide; it breaks open the stomach of certain insects and kills them.

But Monsanto and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) swore up and down that it was only insects that would be hurt. The Bt-toxin, they claimed, would be completely destroyed in the human digestive system and not have any impact on all of us trusting corn-eating consumers.

Oops. A study just proved them wrong.

READ THE ARTICLE

Wind and Solar Opponents Use Bureaucracy to Stall Projects

   I can't say this surprises me in the least. Here's the whole story in a nut:

"The government issued only a few dozen permits to develop wind and solar energy projects on public land last year compared with more than 1,300 oil and gas permits issued on federal land..."

“...'opponents can use regulatory stalling and delay tactics' to 'financially cripple' projects..."

"While federal incentives such as production tax credits and investment tax credits have helped the wind and solar industries, current credits are set to expire in a few years."

   The article doesn't name the "opponents" of wind and solar, but it seems a pretty safe bet big oil has a hand in it. Whoever the opponents are, this is further evidence that the government is subservient to big business. Since big business is only responsible for shareholder profits and not the health of people, the planet, or future generations, this is a very dangerous predicament in which we find ourselves.


June 1, 2011, 5:03 p.m. EDT
Permits, uncertainty obstruct wind, solar energy
By Eric Skalac of Medill News Service

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The government issued only a few dozen permits to develop wind and solar energy projects on public land last year compared with more than 1,300 oil and gas permits issued on federal land, a shockingly low number that needs to be fixed fast, members of a House committee said Wednesday

The culprit, according to many of the wind and solar industry officials testifying at the Natural Resources Committee hearing, is a bureaucratic process that can be used by project opponents to stall plans until they become economically unfeasible.

“I’m shocked at the constant problem of permitting and uncertainty,” said Rep. Jeff Landry, Republican of Louisiana.

James Gordon, president of Cape Wind Associates, LLC, detailed the permitting process during his experience with what could become the nation’s first offshore wind generation project, which has been in development for the last 11 years.

With no legal requirement for the duration of a permit review period, “opponents can use regulatory stalling and delay tactics” to “financially cripple” projects that may meet the necessary standards, he said. “One small group can tie you up in knots for many years,” Gordon said, referring to a special interest group that he said “has sought to delay the [permit] review process at every turn.”

The Natural Resources Committee has been trying to identify roadblocks to wind and solar energy projects. At its first hearing on May 13, the committee asked the directors of the Bureau for Land Management and the Bureau for Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement to explain the alleged permitting delays. The officials said they were working to eliminate redundant steps.

The wind energy industry alone employs about 75,000 people in the U.S., and the generating capacity has grown annually by 35% over the past five years, “second only to natural gas and more than nuclear and coal combined,” said American Wind Energy Association spokesman Roby Roberts in a prepared statement. But despite industry growth, the witnesses agreed that the major roadblocks of policy uncertainty and a lengthy permitting process remain.

While federal incentives such as production tax credits and investment tax credits have helped the wind and solar industries, current credits are set to expire in a few years.

In addition, a grant program in the 2009 stimulus law provided $7 billion to be awarded to 2,601 renewable energy projects so far, “leveraging approximately $22 billion in private sector investment,” according to Stanford University energy expert Dan Reicher. But if projects have not started construction by the end of this year, they will lose the money.

[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE]

   I am reminded of our own Declaration:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."


   Something needs to change.

Economic Consequences

   Two articles appeared on Market Watch today that I wanted to share.

   The first reports that the housing market is taking yet another dive, indicating no foreseeable economic recovery on the horizon:

May 31, 2011, 12:56 p.m. EDT
Housing in double-dip decline as prices fall again
S&P/Case-Shiller index shows U.S. values falling below 2009 trough
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — U.S. home prices fell in March for the eighth straight month, confirming the beleaguered housing market has entered a double-dip recession, according to a closely followed index released Tuesday.

Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities declined 0.8% in March on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Case-Shiller home-price index released by Standard & Poor’s.

Prices fell in 18 of 20 cities in March on a monthly basis. Only Washington, D.C., and Seattle showed advances. Over the past year, only Washington, D.C., has seen prices advance.

Prices fell 3.6% on a year-over-year basis in March, compared with a 3.3% year-over-year drop in February.

The 20-city index is now below its April 2009 trough, meaning that home prices have fully retreated from gains posted from May 2009 through June 2010, putting housing in a double-dip downturn.

“Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor’s.


[READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE]

   The second article really puts the economic problem in perspective. After three years of financial ruin, seems a lot of people want to point fingers but no one wants to take blame. Worse yet, there doesn't seem to be any entity interested in holding anyone -- except for the American tax payer, that is -- responsible...

May 31, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT
Why no jail time for Wall Street CEOs?
Commentary: Little reason to hope that justice will be served
By David Weidner, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — It’s probably the most asked question to come out of the financial crisis: why aren’t any Wall Street CEOs in jail?

It’s asked on the message boards, over dinner, in the media, in Washington and in schools. Most people shrug and agree, someone important — Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS -.00%  , Stan O’Neill, formerly of Merrill Lynch & Co., or Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers — should go to jail, right?

A lot of us have tried to answer this question. Joe Nocera at the New York Times wrote in February that prosecutions were unlikely because “delusion is an ironclad defense.”

More recently, Roger Lowenstein, writing for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, concluded “risk-taking and stupidity aren’t criminal.” Lowenstein’s argument won praise from the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin who tweeted that Lowenstein was “probably right.”

Finally, Bill Black, the University of Missouri at Kansas City law school professor, and one of clearest-thinking minds on culpability in the financial crisis, wrote a blistering takedown of both Lowenstein and Sorkin on The Big Picture blog by quoting their previous writing on Wall Street against them. In Sorkin’s case:

“If the government spent half the time trying to ferret out fraud at major companies that it does tracking pump-and-dump schemes, we might have been able to stop the financial crisis, or at least we’d have a fighting chance at stopping the next one.”

Taking down the ‘Don’

The upshot of these assessments of legal culpability seems to be that while a successful prosecution may have long odds, it’s probably worth doing. Indeed, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the Senate Investigations Subcommittee report on Wall Street, the Levin-Coburn report, both suggest further investigations are in order.

“It is possible for certain senior executives at major financial firms and banks to be held liable for the credit crisis,” said Michael Chester, a partner at Skarzysnki Walsh & Black. “However, putting together a successful case will likely be much more problematic than most realize.”

For one, regulators just haven’t been keeping up, Chester said.

“Traditionally, these agencies have always amassed large amounts of information to use in subsequent criminal prosecutions. However, statistics show that these agencies have referred fewer financial cases to the U.S. Department of Justice in recent years.”

Also, a ruling in the case against former Enron Chief Executive Jeff Skilling about the “honest services” statute now strictly applies to bribes and kickbacks, Chester said.

Moreover, the statute of limitations has run out on a lot of securities law claims, said Max Gardner, a consumer advocacy lawyer who’s been working in the foreclosure space. He adds that it’s difficult to pursue claims against securities sold by the banks these CEOs ran, because common-law fraud claims require a showing of intent.

“There’s also the representations and warranties in the securitization documents themselves, including that there is good title to the mortgages and that they’re not in default,” he said. “”It’s important to emphasize, however, that there could be suits against mortgage-backed securities sponsors, MBS servicers, and MBS trustees.”

But those targets are admittedly below the executive suite for which we’re aiming. It’s hard, but not impossible, to believe those CEOs didn’t know how reckless their standards had become on the mortgage and securitization front. Again, the Coburn-Levin report suggests there are some smoking guns that could link high-level executives who testified that they just didn’t know what was happening.

Even if there was evidence enough to build a case, it probably wouldn’t satisfy us.

“For those who sold financial products that misrepresented their credit worthiness, how far up the chain do you want to go?” asked Brian Greenberg, an accountant and investor based in Marlton, N.J. “Do you want to take down the ’Don’?

“In that case start with the Federal Reserve that made credit plentiful and cheap without any regard to creditworthiness of the buyer. If their excessive policy of pushing cheap money did not exist, then Wall Street would not have been able to push the ’junk’ to the kids — er, public.”

Greenberg makes a fair point. There’s a lot of blame to go around.

It’s the ability to mete out punishment that has its limits.


David Weidner covers Wall Street for MarketWatch.

[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE]

   We've all been much, much too complacent.