How did we get here?
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Friday, October 21, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Thoughts on American Capitalism
I haven't posted anything here in a little while because I've been preoccupied with the Occupy Wall Street protest. Personally, I think it's high time Americans stood up and said, "We've had enough!" and I think it's great that the movement has gone global. Thomas Jefferson said, "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.", and, "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere." What's happening now is a good thing.
I wanted to take some time today to offer some ideas on why this rebellion has risen up. I am in no way a spokesperson for any Occupy event/movement, so don't misunderstand, these are just the thoughts of one citizen.
I believe far too many Americans believe that we have a capitalist economy. Far too many Americans believe we have a democracy. Both of these are false and I believe that the misperceptions of these two things have helped politicians to polarize party lines.
The U.S. government was not founded as a democracy. The founding fathers did not trust the average citizen to not be taken in by a silver-tongued devil. Looking at the country and it's media today it could be argued that the founding fathers were ahead of their time. Democracies had been shown to be too chaotic to be sustainable so they set up a republic wherein we the people get to elect representatives to make decisions and run the country on our behalf. What that means for the average citizen is, if you are not satisfied with the way your representatives in government are running things, you need to communicate that to them and if they don't listen you need to elect someone who will. I know this is more work than most Americans want to do, but if you let the government run itself it will act in it's own best interest (as it has).
(The good news is that this is much easier to do today than it has been in the past! I would recommend going to Congress.org and signing up for updates on what your representatives are voting for and against. While you're at it look up some activist sites that concern themselves with things you care about and sign up with them. Many send out petitions and letters on key issues that you can sign and follow. Get your representatives' email addresses and phone numbers and contact them directly. Tell them what you want and ask for explanations if they don't do it. Keep them accountable!)
Capitalism. Look around. This is not what Adam Smith had in mind. Before anyone starts quoting The Wealth of Nations out of context let me just remind everyone that Smith first wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments -- his own personally favored work -- and The Wealth of Nations was intended to be considered as the next chapter to The Theory of Moral Sentiment, not as a stand-alone piece.
That said, do we really have a capitalist system where one person can build a business and thrive? In some cases, yes. In most cases, though, no and the odds are looking more and more like those on a lottery ticket. Assuming that one does have the resources and talent to build a business and make it successful, navigating through government regulations and personal and business litigation, that business will likely have to compete with one or more huge corporations that are likely deemed "too big to fail" by their board members in Washington D.C. The deck has been stacked and the game is not the same as it was in the late 1700's.
I recently read an argument that if you took someone from the "rich 1%" and took away everything, they would not complain that they couldn't find a job, they would make their own job and create more jobs in the process. I feel this is oversimplified and that if you put this imaginary person into similar circumstances as the average American (i.e. school loans, children, hospital bills, auto repairs, etc.) the story might vary. But let's assume it's absolutely true. Why should we be content with a system that rewards a single talent on the backs of those with other talents? I know some people who are very good at business. I know more people who have had businesses that either failed or never fully supported them. Most of the people I know are very good at things other than owning and operating a business. Why don't we reward the people who teach the next generation or farmers who create our food supply in the same way we reward someone who can find loopholes in the tax code, has a talent for stock speculation, or is willing to neglect their health and family for the almighty dollar? Isn't the person who drives a truck or the person who builds and maintains the road an important part of the distribution system on which many businesses are built?
The fact that our transportation and energy systems have not really changed all that much in the past one hundred years is an indicator of how we have all become complacent. The system is antiquated and it's high time for an update. Our country needs a reboot. Two hundred and some years ago when the U.S. was being established there were those who believed we should be a simple, agrarian society and not be too involved in the world's affairs. Others wanted something that looked more like England's empire. When decisions were made, guess who came to the table?
It's time for us all to show up to the table and make our voices heard.
I wanted to take some time today to offer some ideas on why this rebellion has risen up. I am in no way a spokesperson for any Occupy event/movement, so don't misunderstand, these are just the thoughts of one citizen.
I believe far too many Americans believe that we have a capitalist economy. Far too many Americans believe we have a democracy. Both of these are false and I believe that the misperceptions of these two things have helped politicians to polarize party lines.
The U.S. government was not founded as a democracy. The founding fathers did not trust the average citizen to not be taken in by a silver-tongued devil. Looking at the country and it's media today it could be argued that the founding fathers were ahead of their time. Democracies had been shown to be too chaotic to be sustainable so they set up a republic wherein we the people get to elect representatives to make decisions and run the country on our behalf. What that means for the average citizen is, if you are not satisfied with the way your representatives in government are running things, you need to communicate that to them and if they don't listen you need to elect someone who will. I know this is more work than most Americans want to do, but if you let the government run itself it will act in it's own best interest (as it has).
(The good news is that this is much easier to do today than it has been in the past! I would recommend going to Congress.org and signing up for updates on what your representatives are voting for and against. While you're at it look up some activist sites that concern themselves with things you care about and sign up with them. Many send out petitions and letters on key issues that you can sign and follow. Get your representatives' email addresses and phone numbers and contact them directly. Tell them what you want and ask for explanations if they don't do it. Keep them accountable!)
Capitalism. Look around. This is not what Adam Smith had in mind. Before anyone starts quoting The Wealth of Nations out of context let me just remind everyone that Smith first wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments -- his own personally favored work -- and The Wealth of Nations was intended to be considered as the next chapter to The Theory of Moral Sentiment, not as a stand-alone piece.
That said, do we really have a capitalist system where one person can build a business and thrive? In some cases, yes. In most cases, though, no and the odds are looking more and more like those on a lottery ticket. Assuming that one does have the resources and talent to build a business and make it successful, navigating through government regulations and personal and business litigation, that business will likely have to compete with one or more huge corporations that are likely deemed "too big to fail" by their board members in Washington D.C. The deck has been stacked and the game is not the same as it was in the late 1700's.
I recently read an argument that if you took someone from the "rich 1%" and took away everything, they would not complain that they couldn't find a job, they would make their own job and create more jobs in the process. I feel this is oversimplified and that if you put this imaginary person into similar circumstances as the average American (i.e. school loans, children, hospital bills, auto repairs, etc.) the story might vary. But let's assume it's absolutely true. Why should we be content with a system that rewards a single talent on the backs of those with other talents? I know some people who are very good at business. I know more people who have had businesses that either failed or never fully supported them. Most of the people I know are very good at things other than owning and operating a business. Why don't we reward the people who teach the next generation or farmers who create our food supply in the same way we reward someone who can find loopholes in the tax code, has a talent for stock speculation, or is willing to neglect their health and family for the almighty dollar? Isn't the person who drives a truck or the person who builds and maintains the road an important part of the distribution system on which many businesses are built?
The fact that our transportation and energy systems have not really changed all that much in the past one hundred years is an indicator of how we have all become complacent. The system is antiquated and it's high time for an update. Our country needs a reboot. Two hundred and some years ago when the U.S. was being established there were those who believed we should be a simple, agrarian society and not be too involved in the world's affairs. Others wanted something that looked more like England's empire. When decisions were made, guess who came to the table?
It's time for us all to show up to the table and make our voices heard.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Politics and Climate Change
I wrote a while back in a post titled, It's Time To Shut Up And Do Something, that I believe climate change is the biggest issue we may ever face as a species.
I didn't stop with my blog post. I appealed to my own representatives on the matter. Here is what Senator Maria Cantwell had to say.
The language illustrates that, while we all agree climate change is a problem, we're not willing to make many concessions.
As always, we are continuing to live off the backs of future generations because we are not willing to sacrifice.
We suck.
[From Maria Cantwell : ]
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about climate change. I appreciate hearing from you on what I believe is the preeminent environmental challenge facing our generation and sincerely regret the delayed response.
As you know, scientists have determined that the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, will cause the Earth's climate to warm, potentially leading to greater occurrences of droughts, floods, and other catastrophic natural disasters. In Washington, climate change is expected to alter the region's historic water cycle, threatening drinking water supplies, wildlife and salmon habitat, and the availability of emissions free hydropower. In fact, researchers project that the annual average temperature in the Pacific Northwest will rise about 2 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2020s and April 1 snowpack could decrease as much as 40% in Washington State by the 2040s. Considering these potentially serious environmental and economic consequences, I believe that the United States must urgently address this matter, in partnership with the rest of the world.
One of my top priorities as a U.S. Senator has been to fight for legislation to promote the production of renewable energy, incentivize energy efficiency, develop clean technology industries, and protect our environment. While these energy measures provide critical tools necessary to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we also need federal legislation that establishes scientifically based emissions caps. Unfortunately, I have concerns about the cap-and-trade climate measures that have dominated Congressional debate to date because they unfairly penalize the Pacific Northwest's decades-old reliance on emissions free hydropower. In addition, they do not recognize that our state's hydropower system is mature and won't be able to add much more capacity in coming years, thus any future electricity generation will likely be relatively more polluting. Some legislative proposals would also effectively penalize Washington State for its years of aggressive energy efficiency measures, making any additional savings more costly for Washington State relative to other parts of the country. Finally, I have strong concerns that some cap-and-trade proposals could provide windfalls to historic polluters, or allow excessive speculation and manipulation of emission allocation trading markets. For decades, Washingtonians have been on the cutting edge of clean energy solutions and energy efficiency, setting an example for the rest of the nation. I have been committed to working with my colleagues to craft legislation that will cut our greenhouse gas emissions without punishing low carbon intensity states.
With that in mind, on December 11, 2009, I authored and introduced bipartisan legislation with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine that will put a predictable price on carbon, reduce our nation's dangerous over-dependence on fossil fuels, and mitigate the threat of global warming. This bill will accelerate our nation's urgently needed transition to a clean energy economy, helping ensure America's leadership in the largest market opportunity of the 21st century while protecting the vast majority of Americans from higher energy prices.
The Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act (S. 2877) gradually limits the amount of fossil fuels entering the U.S. economy by requiring fossil fuel producers and importers to bid at an auction for permits to place their product into commerce. Out of the money raised at the auction, three-fourths goes directly back to every American, and one-fourth goes toward clean energy investment. Eventually, as the amount of carbon allowed into the market declines over time and spending increases in other greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts, the CLEAR Act will reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and by over 80 percent before 2050.
Many Americans are rightfully concerned about rising energy bills during America's transition to a clean energy economy. That's why the CLEAR Act is rooted in protecting consumers, with most of the monthly carbon auctions going straight to your pockets. This monthly dividend, made out to each American on an equal per capita basis, ensures all but the wealthiest ten percent of Washingtonians (who use the most energy) do not lose money but instead come out ahead. A typical family of four would receive tax-free monthly checks averaging $1,100 per year, or up to $21,000 between 2012 and 2030.
The remaining quarter of auction revenues are directed to a dedicated trust, the Clean Energy Reinvestment Trust (CERT) Fund, to accelerate the nation's urgently needed transition to a cleaner 21st century energy system and meet other climate change-related priorities. These priorities include clean energy R&D, low income weatherization assistance, reductions of greenhouse gases in the forestry and agricultural sectors, and needs-based, regionally-targeted assistance for communities and workers transitioning to a clean energy economy.
The CLEAR Act invests in America's future by positioning the United States as a global leader in clean energy expansion, creating jobs and recharging our economy at home. With the right policies, millions of green jobs will be created, strengthening our economy, international competitiveness and nation's infrastructure. The longer we wait to tackle energy independence and carbon pollution, the larger the economic and social costs of adapting to climate change will grow. Our time of renewal is now, and I plan to continue pushing the most effective policies to create a cleaner, more diverse and secure 21st century energy system.
I didn't stop with my blog post. I appealed to my own representatives on the matter. Here is what Senator Maria Cantwell had to say.
The language illustrates that, while we all agree climate change is a problem, we're not willing to make many concessions.
As always, we are continuing to live off the backs of future generations because we are not willing to sacrifice.
We suck.
[From Maria Cantwell : ]
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about climate change. I appreciate hearing from you on what I believe is the preeminent environmental challenge facing our generation and sincerely regret the delayed response.
As you know, scientists have determined that the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, will cause the Earth's climate to warm, potentially leading to greater occurrences of droughts, floods, and other catastrophic natural disasters. In Washington, climate change is expected to alter the region's historic water cycle, threatening drinking water supplies, wildlife and salmon habitat, and the availability of emissions free hydropower. In fact, researchers project that the annual average temperature in the Pacific Northwest will rise about 2 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2020s and April 1 snowpack could decrease as much as 40% in Washington State by the 2040s. Considering these potentially serious environmental and economic consequences, I believe that the United States must urgently address this matter, in partnership with the rest of the world.
One of my top priorities as a U.S. Senator has been to fight for legislation to promote the production of renewable energy, incentivize energy efficiency, develop clean technology industries, and protect our environment. While these energy measures provide critical tools necessary to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we also need federal legislation that establishes scientifically based emissions caps. Unfortunately, I have concerns about the cap-and-trade climate measures that have dominated Congressional debate to date because they unfairly penalize the Pacific Northwest's decades-old reliance on emissions free hydropower. In addition, they do not recognize that our state's hydropower system is mature and won't be able to add much more capacity in coming years, thus any future electricity generation will likely be relatively more polluting. Some legislative proposals would also effectively penalize Washington State for its years of aggressive energy efficiency measures, making any additional savings more costly for Washington State relative to other parts of the country. Finally, I have strong concerns that some cap-and-trade proposals could provide windfalls to historic polluters, or allow excessive speculation and manipulation of emission allocation trading markets. For decades, Washingtonians have been on the cutting edge of clean energy solutions and energy efficiency, setting an example for the rest of the nation. I have been committed to working with my colleagues to craft legislation that will cut our greenhouse gas emissions without punishing low carbon intensity states.
With that in mind, on December 11, 2009, I authored and introduced bipartisan legislation with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine that will put a predictable price on carbon, reduce our nation's dangerous over-dependence on fossil fuels, and mitigate the threat of global warming. This bill will accelerate our nation's urgently needed transition to a clean energy economy, helping ensure America's leadership in the largest market opportunity of the 21st century while protecting the vast majority of Americans from higher energy prices.
The Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act (S. 2877) gradually limits the amount of fossil fuels entering the U.S. economy by requiring fossil fuel producers and importers to bid at an auction for permits to place their product into commerce. Out of the money raised at the auction, three-fourths goes directly back to every American, and one-fourth goes toward clean energy investment. Eventually, as the amount of carbon allowed into the market declines over time and spending increases in other greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts, the CLEAR Act will reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and by over 80 percent before 2050.
Many Americans are rightfully concerned about rising energy bills during America's transition to a clean energy economy. That's why the CLEAR Act is rooted in protecting consumers, with most of the monthly carbon auctions going straight to your pockets. This monthly dividend, made out to each American on an equal per capita basis, ensures all but the wealthiest ten percent of Washingtonians (who use the most energy) do not lose money but instead come out ahead. A typical family of four would receive tax-free monthly checks averaging $1,100 per year, or up to $21,000 between 2012 and 2030.
The remaining quarter of auction revenues are directed to a dedicated trust, the Clean Energy Reinvestment Trust (CERT) Fund, to accelerate the nation's urgently needed transition to a cleaner 21st century energy system and meet other climate change-related priorities. These priorities include clean energy R&D, low income weatherization assistance, reductions of greenhouse gases in the forestry and agricultural sectors, and needs-based, regionally-targeted assistance for communities and workers transitioning to a clean energy economy.
The CLEAR Act invests in America's future by positioning the United States as a global leader in clean energy expansion, creating jobs and recharging our economy at home. With the right policies, millions of green jobs will be created, strengthening our economy, international competitiveness and nation's infrastructure. The longer we wait to tackle energy independence and carbon pollution, the larger the economic and social costs of adapting to climate change will grow. Our time of renewal is now, and I plan to continue pushing the most effective policies to create a cleaner, more diverse and secure 21st century energy system.
Monday, July 25, 2011
How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans
How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans
An insider’s six-step plan to fix Congress
By MICKEY EDWARDS
ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to “take back” their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn’t get better. They won’t this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes.
If we are truly a democracy—if voters get to size up candidates for a public office and choose the one they want—why don’t the elections seem to change anything? Because we elect our leaders, and they then govern, in a system that makes cooperation almost impossible and incivility nearly inevitable, a system in which the campaign season never ends and the struggle for party advantage trumps all other considerations. When Democrat Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House, the leader of the lawmaking branch of government, she said her priority was to … elect more Democrats. After Republican victories in 2010, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his goal was to … prevent the Democratic president’s reelection. With the country at war and the economy in recession, our government leaders’ first thoughts have been of party advantage.
This is not an accident. Ours is a system focused not on collective problem-solving but on a struggle for power between two private organizations. Party activists control access to the ballot through closed party primaries and conventions; partisan leaders design congressional districts. Once elected to Congress, our representatives are divided into warring camps. Partisans decide what bills to take up, what witnesses to hear, what amendments to allow.
Many Americans assume that’s just how democracy works, that this is how it’s always been, that it’s the system the Founders created. But what we have today is a far cry from what the Founders intended. George Washington and James Madison both warned of the dangers posed by political parties. Defenders of the party system argue that parties—including Madison’s own—arose almost immediately after the nation was founded. But those were not parties in the modern sense: they were factions uniting on a few major issues, not marching in lockstep on every issue, large and small. And while some defend the party system as a necessary provider of cues to voters who otherwise might not know how to vote, the Internet and mass media now make it possible for voters to educate themselves about candidates for office.
What we have today is not a legacy of 1789 but an outdated relic of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Progressives pushed for the adoption of primary elections. By 1916, all but a handful of states had instituted the “direct primary” system, under which a party candidate was selected by a public vote, rather than by party leaders in backroom deals. But the primaries, and the nominating conventions, were open only to party members. This reform was supposed to give citizens a bigger role in the election process. Instead, the influence of party leaders has been supplanted by that of a subset of party activists who are often highly ideological and largely uninterested in finding common ground. In Delaware in 2010, a mere 30,000 of that state’s nearly 1 million people kept Mike Castle, a popular congressman and former governor, off the general-election ballot. In Utah, 3,500 people meeting in a closed convention deprived the rest of the state’s 3 million residents of an opportunity to consider reelecting their longtime senator Robert Bennett. For most of the voters who go to the polls in November, the names on the ballot have been reduced to only those candidates the political parties will allow them to choose between. Americans demand a multiplicity of options in almost every other aspect of our lives. And yet we allow small bands of activists to limit our choices of people to represent us in making the nation’s laws.
I am not calling for a magical political “center”: many of the most important steps forward in our history have not come from the center at all, including women’s suffrage and the civil-rights movement, and even our founding rebellion against the British crown. Nor am I pleading for consensus: consensus is not possible in a diverse nation of 300 million people (compromise is the essential ingredient in legislative decision-making). And I’m not pushing for harmony: democracy depends on vigorous debate among competing views. The problem is not division but partisanship—advantage-seeking by private clubs whose central goal is to win political power. There are different ways to conduct elections and manage our government—and strengthen the democratic process. Here are some suggestions designed to turn our political system on its head, so that people, not parties, control our government.
[READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AND SIX STEPS TO FIX CONGRESS HERE]
An insider’s six-step plan to fix Congress
By MICKEY EDWARDS
ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to “take back” their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn’t get better. They won’t this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes.
If we are truly a democracy—if voters get to size up candidates for a public office and choose the one they want—why don’t the elections seem to change anything? Because we elect our leaders, and they then govern, in a system that makes cooperation almost impossible and incivility nearly inevitable, a system in which the campaign season never ends and the struggle for party advantage trumps all other considerations. When Democrat Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House, the leader of the lawmaking branch of government, she said her priority was to … elect more Democrats. After Republican victories in 2010, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his goal was to … prevent the Democratic president’s reelection. With the country at war and the economy in recession, our government leaders’ first thoughts have been of party advantage.
This is not an accident. Ours is a system focused not on collective problem-solving but on a struggle for power between two private organizations. Party activists control access to the ballot through closed party primaries and conventions; partisan leaders design congressional districts. Once elected to Congress, our representatives are divided into warring camps. Partisans decide what bills to take up, what witnesses to hear, what amendments to allow.
Many Americans assume that’s just how democracy works, that this is how it’s always been, that it’s the system the Founders created. But what we have today is a far cry from what the Founders intended. George Washington and James Madison both warned of the dangers posed by political parties. Defenders of the party system argue that parties—including Madison’s own—arose almost immediately after the nation was founded. But those were not parties in the modern sense: they were factions uniting on a few major issues, not marching in lockstep on every issue, large and small. And while some defend the party system as a necessary provider of cues to voters who otherwise might not know how to vote, the Internet and mass media now make it possible for voters to educate themselves about candidates for office.
What we have today is not a legacy of 1789 but an outdated relic of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Progressives pushed for the adoption of primary elections. By 1916, all but a handful of states had instituted the “direct primary” system, under which a party candidate was selected by a public vote, rather than by party leaders in backroom deals. But the primaries, and the nominating conventions, were open only to party members. This reform was supposed to give citizens a bigger role in the election process. Instead, the influence of party leaders has been supplanted by that of a subset of party activists who are often highly ideological and largely uninterested in finding common ground. In Delaware in 2010, a mere 30,000 of that state’s nearly 1 million people kept Mike Castle, a popular congressman and former governor, off the general-election ballot. In Utah, 3,500 people meeting in a closed convention deprived the rest of the state’s 3 million residents of an opportunity to consider reelecting their longtime senator Robert Bennett. For most of the voters who go to the polls in November, the names on the ballot have been reduced to only those candidates the political parties will allow them to choose between. Americans demand a multiplicity of options in almost every other aspect of our lives. And yet we allow small bands of activists to limit our choices of people to represent us in making the nation’s laws.
I am not calling for a magical political “center”: many of the most important steps forward in our history have not come from the center at all, including women’s suffrage and the civil-rights movement, and even our founding rebellion against the British crown. Nor am I pleading for consensus: consensus is not possible in a diverse nation of 300 million people (compromise is the essential ingredient in legislative decision-making). And I’m not pushing for harmony: democracy depends on vigorous debate among competing views. The problem is not division but partisanship—advantage-seeking by private clubs whose central goal is to win political power. There are different ways to conduct elections and manage our government—and strengthen the democratic process. Here are some suggestions designed to turn our political system on its head, so that people, not parties, control our government.
[READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AND SIX STEPS TO FIX CONGRESS HERE]
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Four Things Republicans Used To Believe
Four things Republicans used to believe
Commentary: The party used to be conservative, but not extreme
By Rex Nutting
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Republican Party used to be a center-right party, conservative but mainstream. Now it's the home of extreme views.
Just how extreme have Republican leaders become? Here are four things mainstream Washington Republicans used to believe in, but no longer do.
Taxation: The Republican Party has long favored low tax rates as a way to encourage economic efficiency, but its leaders have always recognized that some taxation is necessary and good. Under the old Republican philosophy, the purpose of taxation is to raise the revenues needed by the government. They believed, in theory, that the government shouldn’t spend money it didn’t have, so sufficient revenues were needed.
Ronald Reagan cut taxes dramatically in his first year in office, but when the deficits rose, he smartly agreed to raise taxes 12 times, including a broad tax-reform bill that eliminated many loopholes and removed many provisions of the tax code that distorted economic incentives.
Today’s Republican Party has abandoned the principle that some taxation is necessary. The party has fully bought into the “starve-the-beast” rhetoric espoused by Grover Norquist and other anti-tax zealots. It has adopted a rigid libertarian philosophy that equates taxation to tyranny, which argues that the government has no right to your money. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean all taxes are immoral.
For today’s Republicans, the proper level of taxation is no longer a question of paying for needed services in the most efficient manner, but is strictly a moral and political matter. The proper level is zero, and only political obstacles stand in the way of achieving that goal.
The current Republican Party pretends to care about deficits, but it clearly doesn’t. It refuses to even consider raising taxes to reduce the deficit, even by closing inefficient loopholes that distort the economy. The Republican-controlled House passed the Ryan budget plan, which cuts taxes and spending by trillions of dollars but does almost nothing to reduce the deficit over the next 10 years
A strong presidency: Republicans have long favored a strong presidency, especially in foreign affairs. Under the administration of George W. Bush, high officials even promoted an extreme theory of a “unitary executive” that claimed that the president was largely above the law, and could do pretty much what he wanted, including ignoring national and international laws banning torture and unlawful imprisonment.
That’s a far cry from today, when Republicans in the House rushed to approve a resolution to condemn President Barack Obama’s involvement in Libya’s civil war, saying he didn’t consult with Congress enough. That was the same complaint some Republicans had about Democratic President Bill Clinton’s decision to fight in Kosovo.
The Libyan crisis put the Republicans in a terrible jam. Generally, they like a good fight, especially against a cartoonish bully like Moammar Gadhafi. When the rebellion first broke out, many Republicans demanded that the U.S. get involved in the civil war. But then Obama ordered a no-fly zone over Libya, just as Republicans had demanded. Nothing infuriates Republicans more than when Obama agrees with them.
It seems as if the Republicans do have a consistent principle when it comes to the president’s war-making powers: Republican presidents are the unquestioned commander-in-chief of the armed services and may start wars wherever they please, but Democratic presidents aren’t even qualified to order lunch, much less boss the troops around.
Protecting our planet: Republicans used to be conservatives in the truest sense of the word. They favored sensible laws to conserve the water, air and land. The Environmental Protection Agency was created by Republican President Richard Nixon.
For years, Republicans favored market-based solutions to environmental problems, rather than relying on government regulations and bureaucrats. For instance, many Republicans, including John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mark Kirk, Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney, favored a plan to give businesses an incentive to reduce greenhouse gases by giving them the right to sell their rights to emit carbon dioxide — what’s known as the cap-and-trade plan to combat climate change.
Cap and trade is a Republican idea through and through; it was modeled on the successful cap-and-trade acid-rain program initiated by the White House under Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990. Read the Political History of Cap and Trade.
Today’s Republicans reject almost all government actions to protect the environment, saying they kill jobs. They want to drill for oil and gas everywhere, they want the EPA to stop regulating pollution, and they categorically reject all scientific evidence for climate change. They are so dead-set against conservation that they voted to kill a regulation (approved under Republican President George W. Bush) requiring that Americans use light bulbs that actually emit more light than heat.
Universal health coverage: It’s no secret that today’s Republican Party loathes the idea of universal health-care coverage. It believes requiring Americans to buy coverage is unconstitutional and immoral. One of its most cherished goals is to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
But did you know that the Affordable Care Act — derisively known as ObamaCare — is essentially a Republican plan, modeled after a 1993 Republican health-care bill and the Massachusetts state law signed by Mitt Romney?
The ambition of the 1993 bill introduced by Rhode Island Republican John Chafee was to provide universal coverage, with all Americans required to buy insurance. The bill would have subsidized coverage for those with low incomes. It would have prohibited denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions. And it would have fined employers who did not offer a qualified health-care plan. Sound familiar?
It was sponsored by 19 Republican senators, including Bob Dole, Pete Domenici, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Bob Bennett, Dick Lugar, Alan Simpson and Ted Stephens.
You may not recognize all those names, but you should know this group was the Republican establishment in 1993. And that Republican establishment was far to the left of today’s Republican Party.
[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE]
Commentary: The party used to be conservative, but not extreme
By Rex Nutting
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Republican Party used to be a center-right party, conservative but mainstream. Now it's the home of extreme views.
Just how extreme have Republican leaders become? Here are four things mainstream Washington Republicans used to believe in, but no longer do.
Taxation: The Republican Party has long favored low tax rates as a way to encourage economic efficiency, but its leaders have always recognized that some taxation is necessary and good. Under the old Republican philosophy, the purpose of taxation is to raise the revenues needed by the government. They believed, in theory, that the government shouldn’t spend money it didn’t have, so sufficient revenues were needed.
Ronald Reagan cut taxes dramatically in his first year in office, but when the deficits rose, he smartly agreed to raise taxes 12 times, including a broad tax-reform bill that eliminated many loopholes and removed many provisions of the tax code that distorted economic incentives.
Today’s Republican Party has abandoned the principle that some taxation is necessary. The party has fully bought into the “starve-the-beast” rhetoric espoused by Grover Norquist and other anti-tax zealots. It has adopted a rigid libertarian philosophy that equates taxation to tyranny, which argues that the government has no right to your money. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean all taxes are immoral.
For today’s Republicans, the proper level of taxation is no longer a question of paying for needed services in the most efficient manner, but is strictly a moral and political matter. The proper level is zero, and only political obstacles stand in the way of achieving that goal.
The current Republican Party pretends to care about deficits, but it clearly doesn’t. It refuses to even consider raising taxes to reduce the deficit, even by closing inefficient loopholes that distort the economy. The Republican-controlled House passed the Ryan budget plan, which cuts taxes and spending by trillions of dollars but does almost nothing to reduce the deficit over the next 10 years
A strong presidency: Republicans have long favored a strong presidency, especially in foreign affairs. Under the administration of George W. Bush, high officials even promoted an extreme theory of a “unitary executive” that claimed that the president was largely above the law, and could do pretty much what he wanted, including ignoring national and international laws banning torture and unlawful imprisonment.
That’s a far cry from today, when Republicans in the House rushed to approve a resolution to condemn President Barack Obama’s involvement in Libya’s civil war, saying he didn’t consult with Congress enough. That was the same complaint some Republicans had about Democratic President Bill Clinton’s decision to fight in Kosovo.
The Libyan crisis put the Republicans in a terrible jam. Generally, they like a good fight, especially against a cartoonish bully like Moammar Gadhafi. When the rebellion first broke out, many Republicans demanded that the U.S. get involved in the civil war. But then Obama ordered a no-fly zone over Libya, just as Republicans had demanded. Nothing infuriates Republicans more than when Obama agrees with them.
It seems as if the Republicans do have a consistent principle when it comes to the president’s war-making powers: Republican presidents are the unquestioned commander-in-chief of the armed services and may start wars wherever they please, but Democratic presidents aren’t even qualified to order lunch, much less boss the troops around.
Protecting our planet: Republicans used to be conservatives in the truest sense of the word. They favored sensible laws to conserve the water, air and land. The Environmental Protection Agency was created by Republican President Richard Nixon.
For years, Republicans favored market-based solutions to environmental problems, rather than relying on government regulations and bureaucrats. For instance, many Republicans, including John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mark Kirk, Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney, favored a plan to give businesses an incentive to reduce greenhouse gases by giving them the right to sell their rights to emit carbon dioxide — what’s known as the cap-and-trade plan to combat climate change.
Cap and trade is a Republican idea through and through; it was modeled on the successful cap-and-trade acid-rain program initiated by the White House under Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990. Read the Political History of Cap and Trade.
Today’s Republicans reject almost all government actions to protect the environment, saying they kill jobs. They want to drill for oil and gas everywhere, they want the EPA to stop regulating pollution, and they categorically reject all scientific evidence for climate change. They are so dead-set against conservation that they voted to kill a regulation (approved under Republican President George W. Bush) requiring that Americans use light bulbs that actually emit more light than heat.
Universal health coverage: It’s no secret that today’s Republican Party loathes the idea of universal health-care coverage. It believes requiring Americans to buy coverage is unconstitutional and immoral. One of its most cherished goals is to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
But did you know that the Affordable Care Act — derisively known as ObamaCare — is essentially a Republican plan, modeled after a 1993 Republican health-care bill and the Massachusetts state law signed by Mitt Romney?
The ambition of the 1993 bill introduced by Rhode Island Republican John Chafee was to provide universal coverage, with all Americans required to buy insurance. The bill would have subsidized coverage for those with low incomes. It would have prohibited denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions. And it would have fined employers who did not offer a qualified health-care plan. Sound familiar?
It was sponsored by 19 Republican senators, including Bob Dole, Pete Domenici, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Bob Bennett, Dick Lugar, Alan Simpson and Ted Stephens.
You may not recognize all those names, but you should know this group was the Republican establishment in 1993. And that Republican establishment was far to the left of today’s Republican Party.
[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE]
Saturday, July 9, 2011
It's Time To Shut Up And Do Something
Our garden is about two months behind last year, which was a horrible growing season. Yesterday I was able to hang the laundry outside for the first time this year -- that's about two months behind the norm. It's not just the Puget Sound. While in Nebraska, every time I commented on how beautiful it was (it really is) I was told how wet and cold it had been and generations of folks would say, "It's never this green this time of year".
There are tornadoes in Arizona, the Missouri River is experiencing record flooding, and the entire state of Texas has been declared a disaster area due to drought and wildfires. Oceans are rising. It seems pretty obvious that Ma Nature is not cooperating with human "business as usual".
People in Canada and Australia are concerned about what we need to do about it. It was only a few years ago that the majority of Americans believed that climate change was an important issue that needed to be addressed. Then two things happened: the economy took a dive and a democrat was elected President. This is important because climatologists still insist that we need to address the causes of climate change immediately, if it's not already too late. But a handful of people have decided to use the issue to further polarize political parties and now the number of climate change deniers is going up.
This is insane and I don't understand the reasoning.
Okay, so a few strange weather occurrences does not necessarily mean anything. I get that and if that's what we were talking about, that'd be one thing. But we aren't. We're talking about a growing body of evidence and a majority of scientists who agree that climate change is happening and we are responsible.
"We can't afford to do anything about it right now". The economy is in the toilet, sure, but who is going to be glad we focused on that when millions of people start getting displaced, we can't grow food, and drinking water is scarce? It's as if people don't understand we are talking about losing our basic necessities: food and shelter. We are talking about a world that can not longer sustain not just us, but the plants and animals that we rely on. I really want my 401k to take care of me when I retire, but if it's a choice between that or food, I'll find a way to make ends meet.
I read somewhere someone called climate change a hoax and suggested that it was some kind of liberal plot to make people spend money. First of all, if you want plots, turn to the advertising companies. Marketers have gotten us all to spend so much money on crap -- much of which is bad for us -- I can't understand where anyone has the energy to spend on a conspiracy theory around climate change. Second, these are the same people bitching about the economy. Guess what? Investing in new energy sources CREATES JOBS. We should be creating new jobs in solar, wind, and hydro manufacturing and installation and putting people back to work! Why is anybody against these new jobs?
If we really buckle down and try to deal with this problem the worst case scenario is this: the economy gets a shot in the arm with new jobs, we create cleaner energy, the air and water are cleaner, we all become a little more responsible, our children have better lives, and it was all for nothing -- either it really is too late and we can't change it, or it was all just a myth.
Here's the other worst case scenario: droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and rising sea levels displace the majority of the world's population over the next decades, our agriculture and natural resources are wiped out, and you, me, and our children become part of the sharpest population decline in human history.
Do we have our priorities straight?
Further reading:
http://www.thesomervillenews.com/archives/16495
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/jul/08/lets-change-our-ways-before-its-too-late/
http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/book_files/pb4book.pdf
There are tornadoes in Arizona, the Missouri River is experiencing record flooding, and the entire state of Texas has been declared a disaster area due to drought and wildfires. Oceans are rising. It seems pretty obvious that Ma Nature is not cooperating with human "business as usual".
People in Canada and Australia are concerned about what we need to do about it. It was only a few years ago that the majority of Americans believed that climate change was an important issue that needed to be addressed. Then two things happened: the economy took a dive and a democrat was elected President. This is important because climatologists still insist that we need to address the causes of climate change immediately, if it's not already too late. But a handful of people have decided to use the issue to further polarize political parties and now the number of climate change deniers is going up.
This is insane and I don't understand the reasoning.
Okay, so a few strange weather occurrences does not necessarily mean anything. I get that and if that's what we were talking about, that'd be one thing. But we aren't. We're talking about a growing body of evidence and a majority of scientists who agree that climate change is happening and we are responsible.
"We can't afford to do anything about it right now". The economy is in the toilet, sure, but who is going to be glad we focused on that when millions of people start getting displaced, we can't grow food, and drinking water is scarce? It's as if people don't understand we are talking about losing our basic necessities: food and shelter. We are talking about a world that can not longer sustain not just us, but the plants and animals that we rely on. I really want my 401k to take care of me when I retire, but if it's a choice between that or food, I'll find a way to make ends meet.
I read somewhere someone called climate change a hoax and suggested that it was some kind of liberal plot to make people spend money. First of all, if you want plots, turn to the advertising companies. Marketers have gotten us all to spend so much money on crap -- much of which is bad for us -- I can't understand where anyone has the energy to spend on a conspiracy theory around climate change. Second, these are the same people bitching about the economy. Guess what? Investing in new energy sources CREATES JOBS. We should be creating new jobs in solar, wind, and hydro manufacturing and installation and putting people back to work! Why is anybody against these new jobs?
If we really buckle down and try to deal with this problem the worst case scenario is this: the economy gets a shot in the arm with new jobs, we create cleaner energy, the air and water are cleaner, we all become a little more responsible, our children have better lives, and it was all for nothing -- either it really is too late and we can't change it, or it was all just a myth.
Here's the other worst case scenario: droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and rising sea levels displace the majority of the world's population over the next decades, our agriculture and natural resources are wiped out, and you, me, and our children become part of the sharpest population decline in human history.
Do we have our priorities straight?
Further reading:
http://www.thesomervillenews.com/archives/16495
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/jul/08/lets-change-our-ways-before-its-too-late/
http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/book_files/pb4book.pdf
Thursday, June 23, 2011
What They Don't Know About the Deficit
From CQ.com:
CQ WEEKLY – COVER STORY
June 11, 2011 – 10:32 a.m.
What They Don't Know About the Deficit
By Fred Barbash, CQ Staff
With Washington tied in knots over the budget deficit, pollsters lately have been trying to get a sense of exactly where voters stand on the issue. What they’re finding would not be terribly helpful to those trying to solve the problem.
That’s because many Americans’ perception of how federal spending is divvied up is just plain wrong. In fact, if their answers about the federal budget were even close to correct, slashing the deficit would be a breeze.
In a recent CNN-Opinion Research survey, 30 percent of the respondents guessed that a fifth or more of the budget goes for foreign humanitarian and development aid. The real figure is closer to six-tenths of 1 percent.
In a Bloomberg survey, 70 percent said cutting foreign aid would make a large dent in the deficit. Fewer than half said the same about cutting Medicare.
About 22 percent of the respondents, when surveyed, thought the Corporation for Public Broadcasting consumes more than a tenth of the budget. The reality is closer to a hundredth of a percent.
And about a quarter of those in the survey believed that more than 10 percent of taxpayer money pays for housing assistance for the poor. The real figure is about 1.2 percent.
At a time when the deficit is driving every debate in Washington, the fiscal intelligence of the citizenry is troubling but not surprising to experts on public opinion. Mostly, pollsters say, people are in a state of confusion on a broad variety of issues.
It isn’t that they don’t care. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of those responding in most surveys see the deficit as a “major problem.” It’s that they don’t know. Not knowing in America is an old habit that should have faded over the years, given Americans’ educational opportunities and access to information, but hasn’t, according to those who study public opinion.
Failed quizzes about the budget only scratch the surface. Research demonstrates fundamental misunderstandings across the spectrum about government, about which level of government does what and which official is accountable for what. Presidents get blamed for local problems, mayors for national problems. Incumbent office holders can even get a boost on voting day if their local team wins a major championship just prior to an election.
This ignorance creates a vacuum that politicians and activists are all too happy to fill — with their own spin.
Multiple versions of reality or wishful thinking distort the debate, particularly on issues such as government spending. “It explains why people say, ‘We don’t like deficits,’ and on the other hand say, ‘Don’t cut anything and don’t raise taxes,’” said Bryan Caplan, a George Mason University scholar and author of an oft-cited book, “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.”
It explains why many think that “raising taxes on rich people will do it” on the deficit, says Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. “Some knowledge about wealth might change that attitude.”
The fact that there’s so little understanding of the basic facts means there’s little agreement on what is actually being debated, complicating matters further. “The lack of an agreed-upon playing field makes the deficit debate a disaster,” says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studies public opinion. “People are talking past each other.”
Confusion is the norm for many Americans, and every month brings another illustration in the form of surveys showing just what Americans don’t know. One of the most jaw-dropping recent results came from a Kaiser Family Foundation survey in which nearly half the respondents could not say whether the Obama administration’s health care law was still law. A quarter thought it had been repealed. Another didn’t know whether it existed or not.
A trove of data just before and after the 2010 midterm election showed serious misunderstandings among voters about virtually every issue they claimed to care about, from the economy to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the economic stimulus bill and the 2008 financial industry bailout.
On the economy, almost two-thirds of voters surveyed in a Bloomberg poll believed incorrectly that the economy hadn’t grown during 2010, when, in fact, it grew all that fiscal year.
In the immediate wake of the 2010 election, fewer than half of Americans, according to a Pew poll, didn’t know exactly how it came out, whether Republicans had won the House, the House and the Senate, or neither.
The more systemic problem, and one that disturbs academics and others who study this phenomenon, is the gap demonstrated by a series of studies of what citizens need to know to hold officials accountable: What level of government is responsible for what; who has control over certain events, and who does not.
This vacuum in understanding, say public opinion experts, lets officials off the hook and also licenses their finger-pointing exercises as they try to shift responsibility elsewhere.
Overwhelmed with Information
It isn’t news that the public is badly informed on public affairs. The dark arts practiced by political consultants are predicated on the idea that some proportion of voters will believe almost anything in part because their knowledge is limited. Thus the standard campaign ad can treat opinion as fact just as voters do in surveys: “Republicans voted to end Medicare” is one example; Democrats passing a “government takeover” of health care is another.
Nor is it a revelation that voters often choose “facts” to suit their opinions. The notion that public broadcasting eats up a sizable chunk of the budget gets life from Republican efforts to eliminate appropriations for National Public Radio. “Conservatives have heard a lot about this on Fox and so are very energized about this issue,” says Kohut.
But civic-minded activists, indeed generations of civics teachers, used to hope that as people became better educated and as news became more accessible, America’s political IQ would improve. That does not appear to have happened.
There’s been no formal measure of public ignorance over time since the 1950s. But Kohut said he did a study in the 1990s showing that young people “knew less about what was going on in the world than they had in the ’60s and ’70s. Since then we’ve gone through a coaxial revolution and a digital revolution of news flows, and the levels of information are the same as they were in the early ’90s.”
Indeed, scholars and surveys suggest that the proliferation of new media outlets — cable television news, the Internet, Twitter and all the rest — have become part of the problem.
“The level of information saturation in the highly advanced economies is not all a good thing,” said Clay Ramsay, research director for the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland. “If you have so many choices” of information, “your sorting problem is increased to the point where you don’t have time for it. You have your kids. You have your marriage. And you have your job. And then you have some time left over for the wider world. If you are constantly trying to thrash your way through extravagant competing claims because no one is helping you filter it out, your ability to see the world gets impaired.”
Studies by Pew and others have shown that people increasingly congregate primarily or exclusively at news sources they know will cater to their existing beliefs. Thus, they are less and less likely to hear information that conflicts with their point of view.
Research by Nyhan and others has confirmed empirically that the speed and ubiquity of new media sources, combined with mastery of the field by partisan activists, has brought the level of misinformation in America to new heights.
Nyhan studied the origin and spread of the claim that the Democratic health care bill included “death panels,” which would determine who would get treated and who would not. In the study, titled “Why the ‘Death Panel’ Myth Wouldn’t Die,” he wrote that as politics has become more polarized, “legislators, pundits and interest groups have waged a vicious communications war against each other, making misleading claims about the other side and its policy agenda. These claims are then rapidly disseminated to the public via both the mainstream media, which often reports misleading rhetoric in a ‘he said, she said’ format, and the growing array of talk radio hosts, cable news shows and websites that cater to the demand for preference-consistent news and (mis)information.”
People tend not to engage on issues, if they do at all, unless and until they feel they have a direct stake and a direct impact on the outcome. “To a certain degree, the public has the policy world and politics on a need-to-know basis,” says Kohut. When people have a need to get interested, he says, they get informed.
Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University who has researched voter ignorance extensively, says the voter who chooses not to know is behaving rationally. Individuals will do a lot of research in advance of decisions they really control, such as whether to buy a new car. But they have miniscule control over who gets elected to the presidency or to Congress, and thus choose not to spend a lot of time prepping in advance of election day. There’s no incentive, Somin says, to become informed just to be a “better voter.”
Congress itself hasn’t done anything to improve voter understanding of the issues, particularly when it involves the complexities of the federal budget.
Political stalemate in Washington means that the annual appropriations process has broken down more often than not in the last decade. Lawmakers use continuing resolutions and omnibus spending bills rather than the more painstaking and deliberative process they designed for themselves to use.
So the civics class notion that the “president proposes and Congress disposes” in federal spending is very far from reality. It’s hard enough for close observers of Congress to understand, much less people watching from afar.
Another distortion comes from the fact that much of the debate over the budget and spending happens around the edges. Two-thirds of all spending is mandatory — meaning interest payments on the debt and entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security — while only a third is spending that can be readily adjusted up or down on a yearly basis. Lawmakers are starting to talk about the need to get Medicare costs under control, but until now much of the noise in budget debates has been over a small slice of the pie. So that small slice takes on outsized importance in the minds of voters. Earmarks are a more minuscule sliver, and they have generated some of the loudest fights.
Another reason the voter may be confused is the sheer complexity of the issues at hand. If Congress decides not to raise the debt ceiling, the perception that the United States is in imminent danger of default might cause a spike in interest rates and do real harm to the economy. On the other hand, no one really knows what would happen, because the government has never before defaulted.
Studying the Ignorant Voter
The study of voter ignorance, which began in the 1940s, has become a modest industry in the academic world. Conservatives over the years associated the “ignorant voter” idea with supposedly elitist and paternalistic liberals. But libertarians such as Caplan and Somin have taken up the subject eagerly.
“Before you study public opinion, you ask why things aren’t better,” says Caplan. “After you study public opinion, you ask why things aren’t worse.”
Somin writes in the draft of his forthcoming book, “Democracy and Political Ignorance,” that the “sheer depth of most individual voters’ ignorance is shocking to many observers not familiar with the research.” He sees public ignorance as “a type of pollution that infects the political system rather than our physical environment.”
Much of the recent research by Somin, Caplan and others does indeed go to the heart of the political system, shedding light on why political professionals do what they do and why it so often works.
Nyhan and Jason Reifler of Georgia State University showed in an ambitious experiment how resistant voters can be to adjusting their version of reality even when presented with the corrective facts. Non-truth sticks, especially when it reinforces an existing bias.
That’s why misleading ads, Nyhan said in an interview, are so popular with consultants — and even more so when such ads create a controversy, which serves to reinforce the falsehood. The consultants’ position “may take a negative hit,” he says, “but they know that once these things are out there, they’re hard to walk back.”
As proof, he says the “death panel” myth persists to this day.
While voter biases reinforce misinformation, voter ignorance is what licenses politicians and their operatives to dish it out. “People who are insiders understand what they can get away with,” says Caplan.
The frailties of homo Americanus are on wider display than they have ever been, thanks to frequency and repetitiveness of polls in recent years. The Pew Research Center’s regular surveys of political knowledge has become a standard index on the subject.
The last one, in March, showed that:
• 43 percent of the public didn’t know the unemployment rate.
• 57 percent didn’t know the name of the Speaker of the House.
• 60 percent didn’t know that most U.S. electricity comes from coal.
• 62 percent didn’t know that Republicans had a majority in the House.
• 71 percent didn’t know that the single program on which the government spends the most money is Medicare.
WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project based at the University of Maryland, conducted a similar study in December 2010. It found “strong evidence that voters were substantially misinformed on many of the issues prominent in the election campaign,” including the economic stimulus law, the health care overhaul, the state of the economy, climate change, campaign contributions and President Obama’s birthplace.
Voters uniformly misattributed the origins of both the financial and auto bailouts, saying Obama started both, when in fact both began under President George W. Bush.
Only 10 percent of the voters knew that their taxes had gone down in recent years. About 38 percent of them believed they had gone up during Obama’s presidency.
The Larger Problem
More revealing is the accountability gap that researchers documented most recently in an unpublished paper titled, “Systematically Biased Beliefs about Political Influence,” by Caplan, Somin, Eric Cramton of the University of Canterbury and Wayne A. Grove of Lemoyne College in Syracuse.
What we found,” said Grove, an economist, “is that if you look item by item at the budget, the economy, and so on, you see that the public does not distinguish the role of Congress from the role of the president from the role of state and local officials.” As a result, he said, “it’s hard to hold politicians accountable,” and the politicians know it, he added.
In addition to being wrong about who does what, voters tend to be wrong about the capacity of officials to influence events over which they have little or no control.
Politicians, political operatives, campaign advertising gurus and pollsters have operated for decades on this very assumption: that the electorate indiscriminately hands out blame and credit. Grove believes this phenomenon bears some responsibility for the deficit, for the intense focus now on spending and taxes, and for the deadlock as Republicans and the White House grapple with the debt ceiling.
Grove credits tea party activists with breaking the accountability code by focusing so much attention on the deficit, and by pointing directly at Congress, which is responsible for the red ink.
Grover Norquist, president of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, also illustrates how a single savvy activist, who understands government, can effectively use that knowledge to inform and mobilize voters who otherwise might stay on the sidelines.
Since Ronald Reagan was president, Norquist has made his organization a powerful force in Republican politics largely by eliciting from candidates signed pledges not to support any measure that looks like a tax increase, whatever it is called. Although the average American might not understand the intricacies of the tax code, they do understand a simple statement like that.
All but 14 sitting Republicans in the House and Senate have signed Norquist’s pledge, and he has a proven track record of mobilizing voters against anyone who breaks it. Among those he is credited with helping to defeat was President George Bush in 1992, who famously broke his “read my lips” pledge against a tax increase.
In recent months, Norquist has figured prominently in the deficit debate, feuding with some GOP senators who think he’s getting in the way of a possible compromise that would bring Republicans on board to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2 to avoid what Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner says would be catastrophic consequences.
GOP leaders are demanding significant spending cuts as a condition of support for the debt limit increase, and most say they’re unwilling to make revenue measures, or tax increases, part of the mix. Democrats say they’ll talk about cuts if Republicans show more flexibility on revenue.
But when some Senate Republicans, including Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn, signaled flexibility on taxes, saying they would consider eliminating some tax deductions and credits as a way to simplify the code and rid it of what they call unneeded “tax expenditures,” Norquist said he would treat those as pledge violations. He certainly isn’t the primary cause of the budget deadlock, but some argue that he contributes to it.
“Simplification of the tax code was something Republicans have talked about for a long time,” says Maryland’s Ramsay. “But Grover Norquist says ‘no.’ The question is why is that so potent. . . . Where does this depth of perception that he has this power come from? The biggest political decision was Grover Norquist sitting alone and deciding that reforming the tax code consisted of a tax increase. Had he decided the other way, the road might have been open” to agreement.
Norquist, in an interview, counters that he isn’t standing in the way of a deal, only of a deal that includes tax increases. “There will be a deal,” he said. “There just won’t be tax increases.” And he took issue with the suggestion that he personally is such a “potent” force. The power comes from the pledge, he says. “If I said tomorrow that we should raise taxes, it wouldn’t matter” because the pledges would still be in effect.
What the pledge does, he says, is to save voters time and effort they would have to expend studying issues to determine what a candidate stands for. “The pledge reduces the cost of being an informed citizen,” he says. Taxation “is an issue that tells you everything else you need to know about the person. If a candidate won’t raise taxes, he won’t be a spender either.”
Activists such as Norquist may be simplifying things for voters. But some believe that the black-and-white inflexible distinctions they draw discourage political deal-making in Congress, Grove said. Meanwhile, citizens who might support compromise largely remain in the dark and on the sidelines. Recent polls do in fact show the public to be more receptive than Congress to a compromise of tax measures and spending cuts.
Kohut says, in his experience, voters ultimately catch up. But it can take time. He cites George W. Bush’s proposal when he first ran for president to create personal accounts under Social Security. “When we started testing the idea of privatizing Social Security, the Bush initiative, we were getting 70 percent of the public saying they liked the idea. Once Bush wins and begins to talk about it, that 70 goes down to a 40. So you have to be very leery about asking questions about things people haven’t thought about,” Kohut says.
“Opinions do change when people get information,” he says, “and they will get the information on things they’ve not thought about when they see an opportunity, or when they feel threatened.”
[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE]
CQ WEEKLY – COVER STORY
June 11, 2011 – 10:32 a.m.
What They Don't Know About the Deficit
By Fred Barbash, CQ Staff
With Washington tied in knots over the budget deficit, pollsters lately have been trying to get a sense of exactly where voters stand on the issue. What they’re finding would not be terribly helpful to those trying to solve the problem.
That’s because many Americans’ perception of how federal spending is divvied up is just plain wrong. In fact, if their answers about the federal budget were even close to correct, slashing the deficit would be a breeze.
In a recent CNN-Opinion Research survey, 30 percent of the respondents guessed that a fifth or more of the budget goes for foreign humanitarian and development aid. The real figure is closer to six-tenths of 1 percent.
In a Bloomberg survey, 70 percent said cutting foreign aid would make a large dent in the deficit. Fewer than half said the same about cutting Medicare.
About 22 percent of the respondents, when surveyed, thought the Corporation for Public Broadcasting consumes more than a tenth of the budget. The reality is closer to a hundredth of a percent.
And about a quarter of those in the survey believed that more than 10 percent of taxpayer money pays for housing assistance for the poor. The real figure is about 1.2 percent.
At a time when the deficit is driving every debate in Washington, the fiscal intelligence of the citizenry is troubling but not surprising to experts on public opinion. Mostly, pollsters say, people are in a state of confusion on a broad variety of issues.
It isn’t that they don’t care. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of those responding in most surveys see the deficit as a “major problem.” It’s that they don’t know. Not knowing in America is an old habit that should have faded over the years, given Americans’ educational opportunities and access to information, but hasn’t, according to those who study public opinion.
Failed quizzes about the budget only scratch the surface. Research demonstrates fundamental misunderstandings across the spectrum about government, about which level of government does what and which official is accountable for what. Presidents get blamed for local problems, mayors for national problems. Incumbent office holders can even get a boost on voting day if their local team wins a major championship just prior to an election.
This ignorance creates a vacuum that politicians and activists are all too happy to fill — with their own spin.
Multiple versions of reality or wishful thinking distort the debate, particularly on issues such as government spending. “It explains why people say, ‘We don’t like deficits,’ and on the other hand say, ‘Don’t cut anything and don’t raise taxes,’” said Bryan Caplan, a George Mason University scholar and author of an oft-cited book, “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.”
It explains why many think that “raising taxes on rich people will do it” on the deficit, says Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. “Some knowledge about wealth might change that attitude.”
The fact that there’s so little understanding of the basic facts means there’s little agreement on what is actually being debated, complicating matters further. “The lack of an agreed-upon playing field makes the deficit debate a disaster,” says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studies public opinion. “People are talking past each other.”
Confusion is the norm for many Americans, and every month brings another illustration in the form of surveys showing just what Americans don’t know. One of the most jaw-dropping recent results came from a Kaiser Family Foundation survey in which nearly half the respondents could not say whether the Obama administration’s health care law was still law. A quarter thought it had been repealed. Another didn’t know whether it existed or not.
A trove of data just before and after the 2010 midterm election showed serious misunderstandings among voters about virtually every issue they claimed to care about, from the economy to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the economic stimulus bill and the 2008 financial industry bailout.
On the economy, almost two-thirds of voters surveyed in a Bloomberg poll believed incorrectly that the economy hadn’t grown during 2010, when, in fact, it grew all that fiscal year.
In the immediate wake of the 2010 election, fewer than half of Americans, according to a Pew poll, didn’t know exactly how it came out, whether Republicans had won the House, the House and the Senate, or neither.
The more systemic problem, and one that disturbs academics and others who study this phenomenon, is the gap demonstrated by a series of studies of what citizens need to know to hold officials accountable: What level of government is responsible for what; who has control over certain events, and who does not.
This vacuum in understanding, say public opinion experts, lets officials off the hook and also licenses their finger-pointing exercises as they try to shift responsibility elsewhere.
Overwhelmed with Information
It isn’t news that the public is badly informed on public affairs. The dark arts practiced by political consultants are predicated on the idea that some proportion of voters will believe almost anything in part because their knowledge is limited. Thus the standard campaign ad can treat opinion as fact just as voters do in surveys: “Republicans voted to end Medicare” is one example; Democrats passing a “government takeover” of health care is another.
Nor is it a revelation that voters often choose “facts” to suit their opinions. The notion that public broadcasting eats up a sizable chunk of the budget gets life from Republican efforts to eliminate appropriations for National Public Radio. “Conservatives have heard a lot about this on Fox and so are very energized about this issue,” says Kohut.
But civic-minded activists, indeed generations of civics teachers, used to hope that as people became better educated and as news became more accessible, America’s political IQ would improve. That does not appear to have happened.
There’s been no formal measure of public ignorance over time since the 1950s. But Kohut said he did a study in the 1990s showing that young people “knew less about what was going on in the world than they had in the ’60s and ’70s. Since then we’ve gone through a coaxial revolution and a digital revolution of news flows, and the levels of information are the same as they were in the early ’90s.”
Indeed, scholars and surveys suggest that the proliferation of new media outlets — cable television news, the Internet, Twitter and all the rest — have become part of the problem.
“The level of information saturation in the highly advanced economies is not all a good thing,” said Clay Ramsay, research director for the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland. “If you have so many choices” of information, “your sorting problem is increased to the point where you don’t have time for it. You have your kids. You have your marriage. And you have your job. And then you have some time left over for the wider world. If you are constantly trying to thrash your way through extravagant competing claims because no one is helping you filter it out, your ability to see the world gets impaired.”
Studies by Pew and others have shown that people increasingly congregate primarily or exclusively at news sources they know will cater to their existing beliefs. Thus, they are less and less likely to hear information that conflicts with their point of view.
Research by Nyhan and others has confirmed empirically that the speed and ubiquity of new media sources, combined with mastery of the field by partisan activists, has brought the level of misinformation in America to new heights.
Nyhan studied the origin and spread of the claim that the Democratic health care bill included “death panels,” which would determine who would get treated and who would not. In the study, titled “Why the ‘Death Panel’ Myth Wouldn’t Die,” he wrote that as politics has become more polarized, “legislators, pundits and interest groups have waged a vicious communications war against each other, making misleading claims about the other side and its policy agenda. These claims are then rapidly disseminated to the public via both the mainstream media, which often reports misleading rhetoric in a ‘he said, she said’ format, and the growing array of talk radio hosts, cable news shows and websites that cater to the demand for preference-consistent news and (mis)information.”
People tend not to engage on issues, if they do at all, unless and until they feel they have a direct stake and a direct impact on the outcome. “To a certain degree, the public has the policy world and politics on a need-to-know basis,” says Kohut. When people have a need to get interested, he says, they get informed.
Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University who has researched voter ignorance extensively, says the voter who chooses not to know is behaving rationally. Individuals will do a lot of research in advance of decisions they really control, such as whether to buy a new car. But they have miniscule control over who gets elected to the presidency or to Congress, and thus choose not to spend a lot of time prepping in advance of election day. There’s no incentive, Somin says, to become informed just to be a “better voter.”
Congress itself hasn’t done anything to improve voter understanding of the issues, particularly when it involves the complexities of the federal budget.
Political stalemate in Washington means that the annual appropriations process has broken down more often than not in the last decade. Lawmakers use continuing resolutions and omnibus spending bills rather than the more painstaking and deliberative process they designed for themselves to use.
So the civics class notion that the “president proposes and Congress disposes” in federal spending is very far from reality. It’s hard enough for close observers of Congress to understand, much less people watching from afar.
Another distortion comes from the fact that much of the debate over the budget and spending happens around the edges. Two-thirds of all spending is mandatory — meaning interest payments on the debt and entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security — while only a third is spending that can be readily adjusted up or down on a yearly basis. Lawmakers are starting to talk about the need to get Medicare costs under control, but until now much of the noise in budget debates has been over a small slice of the pie. So that small slice takes on outsized importance in the minds of voters. Earmarks are a more minuscule sliver, and they have generated some of the loudest fights.
Another reason the voter may be confused is the sheer complexity of the issues at hand. If Congress decides not to raise the debt ceiling, the perception that the United States is in imminent danger of default might cause a spike in interest rates and do real harm to the economy. On the other hand, no one really knows what would happen, because the government has never before defaulted.
Studying the Ignorant Voter
The study of voter ignorance, which began in the 1940s, has become a modest industry in the academic world. Conservatives over the years associated the “ignorant voter” idea with supposedly elitist and paternalistic liberals. But libertarians such as Caplan and Somin have taken up the subject eagerly.
“Before you study public opinion, you ask why things aren’t better,” says Caplan. “After you study public opinion, you ask why things aren’t worse.”
Somin writes in the draft of his forthcoming book, “Democracy and Political Ignorance,” that the “sheer depth of most individual voters’ ignorance is shocking to many observers not familiar with the research.” He sees public ignorance as “a type of pollution that infects the political system rather than our physical environment.”
Much of the recent research by Somin, Caplan and others does indeed go to the heart of the political system, shedding light on why political professionals do what they do and why it so often works.
Nyhan and Jason Reifler of Georgia State University showed in an ambitious experiment how resistant voters can be to adjusting their version of reality even when presented with the corrective facts. Non-truth sticks, especially when it reinforces an existing bias.
That’s why misleading ads, Nyhan said in an interview, are so popular with consultants — and even more so when such ads create a controversy, which serves to reinforce the falsehood. The consultants’ position “may take a negative hit,” he says, “but they know that once these things are out there, they’re hard to walk back.”
As proof, he says the “death panel” myth persists to this day.
While voter biases reinforce misinformation, voter ignorance is what licenses politicians and their operatives to dish it out. “People who are insiders understand what they can get away with,” says Caplan.
The frailties of homo Americanus are on wider display than they have ever been, thanks to frequency and repetitiveness of polls in recent years. The Pew Research Center’s regular surveys of political knowledge has become a standard index on the subject.
The last one, in March, showed that:
• 43 percent of the public didn’t know the unemployment rate.
• 57 percent didn’t know the name of the Speaker of the House.
• 60 percent didn’t know that most U.S. electricity comes from coal.
• 62 percent didn’t know that Republicans had a majority in the House.
• 71 percent didn’t know that the single program on which the government spends the most money is Medicare.
WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project based at the University of Maryland, conducted a similar study in December 2010. It found “strong evidence that voters were substantially misinformed on many of the issues prominent in the election campaign,” including the economic stimulus law, the health care overhaul, the state of the economy, climate change, campaign contributions and President Obama’s birthplace.
Voters uniformly misattributed the origins of both the financial and auto bailouts, saying Obama started both, when in fact both began under President George W. Bush.
Only 10 percent of the voters knew that their taxes had gone down in recent years. About 38 percent of them believed they had gone up during Obama’s presidency.
The Larger Problem
More revealing is the accountability gap that researchers documented most recently in an unpublished paper titled, “Systematically Biased Beliefs about Political Influence,” by Caplan, Somin, Eric Cramton of the University of Canterbury and Wayne A. Grove of Lemoyne College in Syracuse.
What we found,” said Grove, an economist, “is that if you look item by item at the budget, the economy, and so on, you see that the public does not distinguish the role of Congress from the role of the president from the role of state and local officials.” As a result, he said, “it’s hard to hold politicians accountable,” and the politicians know it, he added.
In addition to being wrong about who does what, voters tend to be wrong about the capacity of officials to influence events over which they have little or no control.
Politicians, political operatives, campaign advertising gurus and pollsters have operated for decades on this very assumption: that the electorate indiscriminately hands out blame and credit. Grove believes this phenomenon bears some responsibility for the deficit, for the intense focus now on spending and taxes, and for the deadlock as Republicans and the White House grapple with the debt ceiling.
Grove credits tea party activists with breaking the accountability code by focusing so much attention on the deficit, and by pointing directly at Congress, which is responsible for the red ink.
Grover Norquist, president of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, also illustrates how a single savvy activist, who understands government, can effectively use that knowledge to inform and mobilize voters who otherwise might stay on the sidelines.
Since Ronald Reagan was president, Norquist has made his organization a powerful force in Republican politics largely by eliciting from candidates signed pledges not to support any measure that looks like a tax increase, whatever it is called. Although the average American might not understand the intricacies of the tax code, they do understand a simple statement like that.
All but 14 sitting Republicans in the House and Senate have signed Norquist’s pledge, and he has a proven track record of mobilizing voters against anyone who breaks it. Among those he is credited with helping to defeat was President George Bush in 1992, who famously broke his “read my lips” pledge against a tax increase.
In recent months, Norquist has figured prominently in the deficit debate, feuding with some GOP senators who think he’s getting in the way of a possible compromise that would bring Republicans on board to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2 to avoid what Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner says would be catastrophic consequences.
GOP leaders are demanding significant spending cuts as a condition of support for the debt limit increase, and most say they’re unwilling to make revenue measures, or tax increases, part of the mix. Democrats say they’ll talk about cuts if Republicans show more flexibility on revenue.
But when some Senate Republicans, including Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn, signaled flexibility on taxes, saying they would consider eliminating some tax deductions and credits as a way to simplify the code and rid it of what they call unneeded “tax expenditures,” Norquist said he would treat those as pledge violations. He certainly isn’t the primary cause of the budget deadlock, but some argue that he contributes to it.
“Simplification of the tax code was something Republicans have talked about for a long time,” says Maryland’s Ramsay. “But Grover Norquist says ‘no.’ The question is why is that so potent. . . . Where does this depth of perception that he has this power come from? The biggest political decision was Grover Norquist sitting alone and deciding that reforming the tax code consisted of a tax increase. Had he decided the other way, the road might have been open” to agreement.
Norquist, in an interview, counters that he isn’t standing in the way of a deal, only of a deal that includes tax increases. “There will be a deal,” he said. “There just won’t be tax increases.” And he took issue with the suggestion that he personally is such a “potent” force. The power comes from the pledge, he says. “If I said tomorrow that we should raise taxes, it wouldn’t matter” because the pledges would still be in effect.
What the pledge does, he says, is to save voters time and effort they would have to expend studying issues to determine what a candidate stands for. “The pledge reduces the cost of being an informed citizen,” he says. Taxation “is an issue that tells you everything else you need to know about the person. If a candidate won’t raise taxes, he won’t be a spender either.”
Activists such as Norquist may be simplifying things for voters. But some believe that the black-and-white inflexible distinctions they draw discourage political deal-making in Congress, Grove said. Meanwhile, citizens who might support compromise largely remain in the dark and on the sidelines. Recent polls do in fact show the public to be more receptive than Congress to a compromise of tax measures and spending cuts.
Kohut says, in his experience, voters ultimately catch up. But it can take time. He cites George W. Bush’s proposal when he first ran for president to create personal accounts under Social Security. “When we started testing the idea of privatizing Social Security, the Bush initiative, we were getting 70 percent of the public saying they liked the idea. Once Bush wins and begins to talk about it, that 70 goes down to a 40. So you have to be very leery about asking questions about things people haven’t thought about,” Kohut says.
“Opinions do change when people get information,” he says, “and they will get the information on things they’ve not thought about when they see an opportunity, or when they feel threatened.”
[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE]
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Man Robs Bank Demanding $1 In Hopes For Health Care
From The San Francisco Chronicle:
John Thorpe
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Having already set his affairs in order, James Verone calmly walked into an RBC bank in North Carolina and committed his first crime in his 59 years on this planet. Verone handed the teller a note that read "This is a bank robbery. Please only give me one dollar," took the dollar from the terrified clerk, and sat down on a couch in the bank's lobby.
"'I'll be sitting right over there in the chair waiting for the police," Verone told the bank teller. And wait he did. Police arrived moments later and apprehended him, hauling him off to the jail cell he so desperately wanted to enter.
No, James Verone isn't crazy. He isn't a career criminal. He didn't rob the bank to get drugs or booze. He didn't do it to get attention or on a lark. James Verone walked into that bank and committed a felony because going to jail was the only way he could receive the health care he needed to survive.
Verone is one man, but he could really be any one of us. He's 59 and well past the point of finding a new career. He was laid off from his 17-year job and, with unemployment hardly a survivable wage, took the first job that came his way. He developed a growth on his chest - the sort of medical condition that could be life-threatening - and earned two ruptured disks in his back, along with problems with his left foot.
After depleting his life savings and realizing he had, literally, nowhere else to turn, Verone committed the crime, hoping he could get the medical care that he so desperately needs.
This is what America has come to? Otherwise honest folks, with no where to turn in life, have to resort to fake-robbing a bank with the hopes they'll be arrested so they can receive medical care?
There is absolutely no reason for an allegedly civilized country, particularly one as wealthy as America, to pass the buck on providing health care for everyone. Yes, everyone: the employed and the unemployed; the sick and the healthy; old and young.
Before you scream "oh no, socialism!!!" stop and consider what you mean by that. How do socialist systems pay for health care? Taxes are collected from businesses and citizens, and a portion of those taxes go to cover the health care costs of everyone in the plan - in other words, everyone in the country.
How do health insurance systems pay for health care? Premiums are collected from businesses and employees, and a portion of those premiums go to cover the health care costs of everyone in the plan.
The difference between the two? Socialized care costs less (because it has a much larger pool of people to draw from), covers everyone at all times, and prevents people from purposefully committing crimes to get treated. Insurance systems ARE socialized systems, except they don't cover everyone and allow a corporation - and entity that neither receives nor provides the medical treatment - to skim a profit off the top.
In what sort of twisted mind is that the rational way to provide medical care? It's not like the marketplace can rationally set prices for health care. A dying man has no ability to check prices and compare services before deciding which hospital he'll take his heart attack to.
Chemotherapy cannot wait for patients to decide if they want to upgrade to the premium service that ABC Cancer, Inc is offering, or if they'll settle for the basic package. Health care is not cable TV and cannot be solved with these over-simplified market solutions. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar, a fraud, or a charlatan - and perhaps a moron. (I would bet on "moron".)
At some point, Americans need to grow up and accept that providing single-payer, government-paid health care for the entire country is not only mandatory - it is the only morally acceptable choice.
[READ THE ORIGINAL SFGATE ARTICLE]
John Thorpe
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Having already set his affairs in order, James Verone calmly walked into an RBC bank in North Carolina and committed his first crime in his 59 years on this planet. Verone handed the teller a note that read "This is a bank robbery. Please only give me one dollar," took the dollar from the terrified clerk, and sat down on a couch in the bank's lobby.
"'I'll be sitting right over there in the chair waiting for the police," Verone told the bank teller. And wait he did. Police arrived moments later and apprehended him, hauling him off to the jail cell he so desperately wanted to enter.
No, James Verone isn't crazy. He isn't a career criminal. He didn't rob the bank to get drugs or booze. He didn't do it to get attention or on a lark. James Verone walked into that bank and committed a felony because going to jail was the only way he could receive the health care he needed to survive.
Verone is one man, but he could really be any one of us. He's 59 and well past the point of finding a new career. He was laid off from his 17-year job and, with unemployment hardly a survivable wage, took the first job that came his way. He developed a growth on his chest - the sort of medical condition that could be life-threatening - and earned two ruptured disks in his back, along with problems with his left foot.
After depleting his life savings and realizing he had, literally, nowhere else to turn, Verone committed the crime, hoping he could get the medical care that he so desperately needs.
This is what America has come to? Otherwise honest folks, with no where to turn in life, have to resort to fake-robbing a bank with the hopes they'll be arrested so they can receive medical care?
There is absolutely no reason for an allegedly civilized country, particularly one as wealthy as America, to pass the buck on providing health care for everyone. Yes, everyone: the employed and the unemployed; the sick and the healthy; old and young.
Before you scream "oh no, socialism!!!" stop and consider what you mean by that. How do socialist systems pay for health care? Taxes are collected from businesses and citizens, and a portion of those taxes go to cover the health care costs of everyone in the plan - in other words, everyone in the country.
How do health insurance systems pay for health care? Premiums are collected from businesses and employees, and a portion of those premiums go to cover the health care costs of everyone in the plan.
The difference between the two? Socialized care costs less (because it has a much larger pool of people to draw from), covers everyone at all times, and prevents people from purposefully committing crimes to get treated. Insurance systems ARE socialized systems, except they don't cover everyone and allow a corporation - and entity that neither receives nor provides the medical treatment - to skim a profit off the top.
In what sort of twisted mind is that the rational way to provide medical care? It's not like the marketplace can rationally set prices for health care. A dying man has no ability to check prices and compare services before deciding which hospital he'll take his heart attack to.
Chemotherapy cannot wait for patients to decide if they want to upgrade to the premium service that ABC Cancer, Inc is offering, or if they'll settle for the basic package. Health care is not cable TV and cannot be solved with these over-simplified market solutions. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar, a fraud, or a charlatan - and perhaps a moron. (I would bet on "moron".)
At some point, Americans need to grow up and accept that providing single-payer, government-paid health care for the entire country is not only mandatory - it is the only morally acceptable choice.
[READ THE ORIGINAL SFGATE ARTICLE]
Friday, June 3, 2011
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
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
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
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.
"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.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Harbinger
Seriously? The U.S. Senate needed sixty votes to proceed with a bill to reduce the deficit by closing big oil tax loopholes and there were 48 Senators willing to vote against it?!? We are fighting two foreign wars, global climate change, an economic crisis, and we desperately need to curb the American appetite for petrol, but 48 U.S. Senators wanted to be sure big oil companies don't have to pay their fair share?!?
This is exactly what the founders meant when they spoke of "voting the rascals out". We should be paying more for gas because the cost is high. We should be paying more for food produced with petrochemicals and being transported long distances. We need to find a balance with nature and the planet so that it will continue to sustain us, but the U.S. Senate just decided big oil's profits are more important than you, me, and our children.
From Congress.org:
I read somewhere someone wrote this:
"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."
We The People need to seriously reexamine our consent!
This is exactly what the founders meant when they spoke of "voting the rascals out". We should be paying more for gas because the cost is high. We should be paying more for food produced with petrochemicals and being transported long distances. We need to find a balance with nature and the planet so that it will continue to sustain us, but the U.S. Senate just decided big oil's profits are more important than you, me, and our children.
From Congress.org:
| Motion to Proceed to the Consideration of S. 940; A bill to reduce the Federal budget deficit by closing big oil tax loopholes, and for other purposes | ||
05/17/2011 Senate Roll Call No. 72 112nd Congress, 1st Session Rejected: 52-48 (see complete tally) | ||
| By 52 yeas to 48 nays (Vote No. 72), Senate did not agree to the motion to proceed to consideration of the bill. | ||
| Vote Map: Senate Roll Call No. 72 |
| 52 |
| ||
| 48 |
|
|  |
I read somewhere someone wrote this:
"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."
We The People need to seriously reexamine our consent!
Monday, May 16, 2011
Obama's Energy Plan for Dummies
Here's the "plan" from whitehouse.gov in jpg form. I really don't mean to criticize...
BUT...
when faced with the question of tipping the balance not for a better life for our children...
or even a life as good...
but just for their survival...
What happened to,
"Yes we can"
?
BUT...
when faced with the question of tipping the balance not for a better life for our children...
or even a life as good...
but just for their survival...
What happened to,
"Yes we can"
?
The One Percent
I just watched this documentary, The One Percent, on Netflix.
It is a film that explores the gap between the rich and poor in the U.S. (and the world). The thing I found unique was the perspective -- it was made by Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson enterprise and fortune. The film is his personal exploration and he is able to use his name to get some great interviews.
Here's part one on You Tube. Follow the links or check out the film on Netflix or your local library to see the whole thing:
It is a film that explores the gap between the rich and poor in the U.S. (and the world). The thing I found unique was the perspective -- it was made by Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson enterprise and fortune. The film is his personal exploration and he is able to use his name to get some great interviews.
Here's part one on You Tube. Follow the links or check out the film on Netflix or your local library to see the whole thing:
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Jefferson Was Right...
...the Tea Party missed the boat.
Thomas Jefferson subscribed to the idea that, "the world belongs to the living." That means that Jefferson believed that the day's government should be elected and run by today's constituency. However, the U.S. government is historically famous for relying on future generations to solve it's current problems.
Thomas Jefferson also believed that the Constitution should be re-written every generation. Here is where the Tea Party fails. If this founder had his wish, the foundation of this country would have evolved and adapted ten times (or more) by now.
The current U.S. system has been outdated for almost 200 years. If not for the Bill of Rights it would be obsolete.
I appreciate and respect tradition. When it's finest Declaration comes from someone who says it's government should be reconsidered each generation, who am I to argue?
With that, I believe we have new issues that must be addressed in today's terms, and very soon.
Thomas Jefferson subscribed to the idea that, "the world belongs to the living." That means that Jefferson believed that the day's government should be elected and run by today's constituency. However, the U.S. government is historically famous for relying on future generations to solve it's current problems.
Thomas Jefferson also believed that the Constitution should be re-written every generation. Here is where the Tea Party fails. If this founder had his wish, the foundation of this country would have evolved and adapted ten times (or more) by now.
The current U.S. system has been outdated for almost 200 years. If not for the Bill of Rights it would be obsolete.
I appreciate and respect tradition. When it's finest Declaration comes from someone who says it's government should be reconsidered each generation, who am I to argue?
With that, I believe we have new issues that must be addressed in today's terms, and very soon.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Lester Brown, Plan B 4.0
I read Lester Brown's book, Plan B 3.0 about two years ago (as I mentioned in Backstory Part III). It's a difficult book to get through because you have to plow through a lot of doom and gloom (about two thirds of the book) before getting to any sign of hope. Brown does offer solutions to the problems, but the book is a lot of explaining exactly the what, where, why, and how of all of these global issues.
While I wholly recommend the new book, I found this video series on You Tube that is a pretty good primer. It was recorded at the University of Chicago on November 17, 2009. This is the sort of thing that should be viral and yet part one only has 112 views, part five has less than 50 views.
If you haven't read the book or are not familiar with Lester Brown's work, I encourage you to take the time to look at this series:
While I wholly recommend the new book, I found this video series on You Tube that is a pretty good primer. It was recorded at the University of Chicago on November 17, 2009. This is the sort of thing that should be viral and yet part one only has 112 views, part five has less than 50 views.
If you haven't read the book or are not familiar with Lester Brown's work, I encourage you to take the time to look at this series:
Monday, April 11, 2011
For the first time, food becomes a political priority
For the first time, food becomes a political priority
JESSICA LEEDER — GLOBAL FOOD REPORTER
From Monday's Globe and Mail
For the first time in Canadian electoral history, the edible is political.
Each of the country’s federal parties have included strategies in their electoral platforms that, to varying degrees, highlight food as a distinct priority separate from agriculture.
The Conservative policy, announced Sunday, most closely resembles a traditional agriculture policy, with its focus on efforts to sustain the family farm and boost exports, while the Liberals and New Democrats aim to foster unprecedented co-operation between government departments dealing with the production, distribution, sale and consumption of food.
Building on a growing middle-class awareness of the pressures on the global food system, all parties acknowledge the need for some sort of long-term national strategy. What separates them are their degrees of willingness to expand their focus beyond the farm.
The fact that food is mentioned across all five electoral platforms is being hailed as a victory for the global food movement, which has already nudged a handful of European nations to implement long-term policies.
“The conversation is changing radically to be able to talk about a food policy,” said Harriet Friedmann, a world-renowned food policy expert with the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. “… It is a triumph of the food movement of the past 20 years.”
On Monday, the parties will hash out their respective policies at a debate in Ottawa. But one food policy critic said none of the platforms are detailed enough to take seriously.
“None of them really link the food story to health care that well, or to social-policy reform,” said Rod MacRae, a professor at York University who is one of Canada’s foremost experts on the subject. “What they’ve done is pick the low-hanging fruit – the things that are more part of the public consciousness right now.”
Still, strong federal leadership in the national food policy process is critical, he said. “The federal role is to act as the animator, the facilitator, and to use its usual package of sticks and carrots to try and get everybody on board.”
[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE]
JESSICA LEEDER — GLOBAL FOOD REPORTER
From Monday's Globe and Mail
For the first time in Canadian electoral history, the edible is political.
Each of the country’s federal parties have included strategies in their electoral platforms that, to varying degrees, highlight food as a distinct priority separate from agriculture.
The Conservative policy, announced Sunday, most closely resembles a traditional agriculture policy, with its focus on efforts to sustain the family farm and boost exports, while the Liberals and New Democrats aim to foster unprecedented co-operation between government departments dealing with the production, distribution, sale and consumption of food.
Building on a growing middle-class awareness of the pressures on the global food system, all parties acknowledge the need for some sort of long-term national strategy. What separates them are their degrees of willingness to expand their focus beyond the farm.
The fact that food is mentioned across all five electoral platforms is being hailed as a victory for the global food movement, which has already nudged a handful of European nations to implement long-term policies.
“The conversation is changing radically to be able to talk about a food policy,” said Harriet Friedmann, a world-renowned food policy expert with the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. “… It is a triumph of the food movement of the past 20 years.”
On Monday, the parties will hash out their respective policies at a debate in Ottawa. But one food policy critic said none of the platforms are detailed enough to take seriously.
“None of them really link the food story to health care that well, or to social-policy reform,” said Rod MacRae, a professor at York University who is one of Canada’s foremost experts on the subject. “What they’ve done is pick the low-hanging fruit – the things that are more part of the public consciousness right now.”
Still, strong federal leadership in the national food policy process is critical, he said. “The federal role is to act as the animator, the facilitator, and to use its usual package of sticks and carrots to try and get everybody on board.”
[READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE]
My Letter to President Obama
Mr. President (and administration),
Twelve days ago I received an email with the subject line of Gas Prices that told of your goal to reduce oil imports. I missed the deadline for the Advise the Advisor feedback, but I wanted to share this with you.
It seems clear to me that we have focused too much on consolidation of resources and activities with catastrophic results like "too big to fail". It seems to me business models need to look more like the internet, which is lots of small computers connected to a large network. With businesses growing larger and larger and becoming more and more consolidated, we are creating more and bigger problems.
Two examples of this are directly connected to this energy policy.
1) Solar farms. Why do we feel we must create large solar farms that take up real estate? The sun shines in different areas at different times and we currently have networks of buildings already connected to the power grid all across the country.
Why don't we let the people build new jobs in solar energy and a new "solar internet" of power by creating incentives to make solar affordable to individuals, families, and businesses in the current market and make requirements for new construction to include solar collection? This would reduce power consumption and feed any extra solar power back into the grid.
2) Agriculture. Right now our industrial model of agriculture uses an unbelievable amount of energy that goes into growing, fertilizing, pesticides, packaging, processing, storing, and distribution from a small number of industrial sources to all over the world. This practice is both unsustainable and unsafe (how many eggs had to be recalled last August?). Concentrated agriculture has proven to be an environmental hazard as well.
Why do we not encourage networks of smaller and more diverse farms that are not a burden on nature, closer to the people they feed, and thereby more sustainable? This model can drastically reduce agricultural energy dependence.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Twelve days ago I received an email with the subject line of Gas Prices that told of your goal to reduce oil imports. I missed the deadline for the Advise the Advisor feedback, but I wanted to share this with you.
It seems clear to me that we have focused too much on consolidation of resources and activities with catastrophic results like "too big to fail". It seems to me business models need to look more like the internet, which is lots of small computers connected to a large network. With businesses growing larger and larger and becoming more and more consolidated, we are creating more and bigger problems.
Two examples of this are directly connected to this energy policy.
1) Solar farms. Why do we feel we must create large solar farms that take up real estate? The sun shines in different areas at different times and we currently have networks of buildings already connected to the power grid all across the country.
Why don't we let the people build new jobs in solar energy and a new "solar internet" of power by creating incentives to make solar affordable to individuals, families, and businesses in the current market and make requirements for new construction to include solar collection? This would reduce power consumption and feed any extra solar power back into the grid.
2) Agriculture. Right now our industrial model of agriculture uses an unbelievable amount of energy that goes into growing, fertilizing, pesticides, packaging, processing, storing, and distribution from a small number of industrial sources to all over the world. This practice is both unsustainable and unsafe (how many eggs had to be recalled last August?). Concentrated agriculture has proven to be an environmental hazard as well.
Why do we not encourage networks of smaller and more diverse farms that are not a burden on nature, closer to the people they feed, and thereby more sustainable? This model can drastically reduce agricultural energy dependence.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
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