The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Life is not a series of triumphs."
--Robert Bly

Who Are We

The other side of celebrating our liberty is to contemplate the liberty we have so recently and so easily given up, and why. "A nation may lose its liberties in a day," observed Montesquieu, "and not miss them for a century." Or not understand their import until an outsider puts them in context, as Alberto Manguel does when he writes about the centuries of suppressions and destructions, the book-burnings and censorships, that we may feel are relics of the past and disreputable habits of other nations and their systems that don't cherish and protect free expression and knowledge. Sure, there are isolated incidents in certain school districts, but these are not the norm, and certainly not national policy.

But in The Library at Night, Manguel reminds us of "Section 215 of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, allowing federal agents to obtain records of books borrowed at any public library or bought at any private bookstore," without offering a reason, and forbidding the library or bookstore to disclose the request or the giving of this information, including to the person targeted.

The other side of celebrating our national identity and the values at its center is to notice where we violate those values and that identity. Manguel provides an example of this as well, for in his descriptions of libraries and legacies destroyed over the centuries--from the burning of the libraries of Alexandria and of the thousands of books containing the cultural legacy of the Mayans and Aztecs, to the Nazis and various Communist governments, he adds the days in 2003 when in the chaos created by the Anglo-American invasion, and with their troops standing by and doing nothing, "the National Archives, the Archeological Museum and the National Library of Baghdad were ransacked and looted. In a few hours, much of the earliest recorded history of humankind was lost to oblivion."

Though this was a direct consequence of American ignorance and arrogance,
it was set in motion ultimately for the same reason as the Patriot Act: fear, both disproportionate and all too easily manipulated. It was this unreasoning fear, which in the end looks a lot like national cowardice, that permitted other outrages. We know what they are, but sometimes the so-called "debate" over them is exposed as baseless and phony, in the form of simple, direct statement, as provided by Gareth Peirce in the London Review of Books:

Seven years ago now, in January 2002, came the first shocking images of human beings in rows in aircraft, hooded and shackled for transportation across the Atlantic, much as other human beings had been carried in slave ships four hundred years earlier. The captor’s humiliation of these anonymous beings – unloaded at Guantánamo Bay, crouched in open cages in orange jumpsuits – was deliberately displayed. The watching world needed no knowledge of international humanitarian conventions to understand that what it was seeing was unlawful, since what is in fact the law precisely mirrors instinctive moral revulsion. The definitions of crimes against humanity, and war crimes, are not complex: ‘Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949’, including ‘torture or inhuman treatment’; ‘wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health’; ‘wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial; unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement.’ What the world could instantly see for itself in those images was that this was the trafficking of human beings."

Once again the ultimate culprit is fear, and how easily our liberties and identity falls to it. We may find solace in the changes made since: the U.S. no longer officially permits torture, but torture was officially committed, libraries and booksellers were monitored, and as a society we have not yet fully acknowledged and condemned these acts, which might go a long way towards making it less likely they will recur. Those who opposed these acts were called unpatriotic, when it was especially dangerous to be so accused. Until these acts are themselves condemned as unpatriotic, we have not affirmed these liberties and identity.

Besides which, these threats are not all in the past. We know someone who in the past week was pulled out of his seat on a commercial aircraft by federal marshals, despite passing through security, showing his boarding pass, etc. Even though the airline quickly acknowledged its error, he was forced to miss his flight and all connecting flights, more than doubling his travel time to nearly 24 hours. There is no escaping the likelihood that this happened to him because he has dark hair and a dark complexion. That he's an Italian-American only makes this outrage a clear echo of a similiar situation, another acquaintance, also Italian American but as well the son of a prominent political figure in Washington, who was also pulled out of line for no other discernable reason. That was in 2002. This is 2009, and it is still happening.

Happy Birthday, USA

Horseshoe Curve Museum grounds, western Pennsylvania. Click photo to enlarge.

The Dreaming Up Daily Birthday Quote

The Way It Is
"There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread."
--William Stafford

Here Comes the Sun (Maybe)

Positive analysis and consequences are following the House passage of the climate and energy bill. The President, his chief of staff, Speaker Pelosi are all getting political credits for getting it through. That it happened while German Chancellor Merkel was in Washington in itself has helped move forward the international process for a new climate treaty, just by being both surprising and encouraging. "The fact that with the United States we stand where we stand today is an enormous success, which I would not have thought possible a year ago -- let me be very serious," Merkel said. The EU needs the US to assert leadership by example, if the crucial cooperation of China, India and third world countries is to be obtained.

As for provisions of the bill itself, Joseph Hebert of AP wrote: "Congress has taken its first step toward an energy revolution, with the prospect of profound change for every household, business, industry and farm in the decades ahead." President Obama dismissed Republican charges that the bill would cost too much and cripple business and the economy. "He recalled similar warnings that the Clean Air Act and a national effort to combat acid rain would send costs soaring and kill jobs -- warnings, he said, that turned out to be false.He castigated opponents for "lying" about cost projections and "scaring the bejeezus" out of voters, and accused Republicans of being stuck in a 1990s-era debate on energy when the American people "have moved forward" with concerns about climate change and hope for renewable power."

He also noted that "What seems contentious now is going to seem like common sense in hindsight" and predicted the measure would "change the political conversation and the incentive structure for businesses in this country."

Just how much and how fast things could change was also suggested by an executive move announced by Secretary of Interior Salazar designating some 670,000 acres in six western states for a study to determine locations for solar power development. As the president of the Solar Energies Industries Association noted, there are some 7,000 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands, but so far none for solar. Salazar expects construction on some 13 commercial-scale solar projects there by next year.

But the climate and energy bill itself must pass the Senate, and then survive conference committee to craft a final bill for the President's signature. That's likely to take months, while the momentous health care bill is being crafted and considered. But that there are other important issues, and always lots of momentary distractions, does not diminish the paramount importance of advancing clean energy and addressing the Climate Crisis.

Paul Krugman's strong column today accuses climate crisis deniers of treason. But it's not just the denying that's the problem--it's the distraction, the failure in the present moment to understand the priority for the future.

Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress suggests what the stakes really are: "If we fail to stop catastrophic global warming, future generations will not care what we have done on issues like health care, the deficit and Iraq. If we fail to stop massive sea level rise, widespread desertification, and 10-degrees-Fahrenheit warming over much of the inland U.S. -- all of which we face on our current emissions path -- then every person who voted against this bill will be vilified by history. "

This is a pivotal moment, and we can't afford to let philandering governors and celebrity demises take our eye off the ball.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"

--Jean Jacques Rousseau. Painting by Paul Klee.

Starting to Address the Climate Crisis

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the cap-and-trade climate and energy bill on Thursday, in a relatively close vote of 219-212. Passage seemed uncertain until well into the afternoon.

In its description, TIME's Swampland blog called it "sweeping." The Huffpost story calls it "historic." (Both stories have good information on the bill and the politics, plus prospects for passage in the Senate.) But for some environmentalists, the bill was a disappointment. Some enviro organizations were lobbying hard to strengthen it or vote against it. Some climate scientists agree that the mandated targets for reducing greenhouse gases are too low to forestall disastrous climate change.

But others see it as an important precedent, a foot in the door, and a structure for change, as well as materially contributing to lessening the Climate Crisis. I found myself instinctively assessing it pretty much as David Roberts does at Grist , though he does so with more information. He agrees that it is inadequate by itself, but writes that it contributes to a solution, and that there are other ways to address the crisis as well:

There is no reason to think that this bill is going to be Obama’s only legacy on energy. Already there’s been the stimulus bill, which will probably do more for clean energy in the next five years than Waxman-Markey, the new mileage standards, and the big climate impacts report. And there is plenty more to come.
• States and cities won’t stop. Waxman-Markey may set national standards at relatively weak levels, but plenty of states have tougher renewable electricity standards. A few are experimenting with feed-in tariffs (see here and here) and producing extraordinary results. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a mayor who wants to revitalize his or her city by establishing a reputation as green (see Grist’s list of 15 green mayors).

Read his other reasons, but to those I add these thoughts: of all we know of the future, the ongoing and accelerating reality of the Climate Crisis is probably the most certain element. It's the baseline. But what we're going to do about it, what we can do about it, will evolve in real time. And in the fullness of that time.

For instance: people are debating how much this legislation will cost an American family in, say, 2020. This is such a futile exercise that it begs to be laughed away. First of all, any purported cost--even if such a price could be reasonably estimated--may be dwarfed by costs associated with effects of the Climate Crisis itself---costs in energy, health, infrastructure etc.

Second, who the hell can forecast anything economic more than a decade in the future? How are those 1999 forecasts holding up? Costs relative to incomes going up or down, the impact of technologies, a thousand unknowns. While we naturally evaluate future spending in terms of current income, income is going to change. Projections say upward, but who knows? And these are averages, which mean they apply to pretty much nobody in particular.

Third, the meaning of any sum will depend on lots of other circumstances. A hundred or two hundred dollars may be the least of anyone's worries. Or it may by then be clearly the future bought cheap.

But just because I believe on balance that passing this bill was a good and important thing, I'm not buying into the inflated claims for it. "Historic" it certainly is. We've finally admitted the problem. We've selected a framework for one important way to address it. That's not nothing. But it's not enough.

Are we as a people really facing the likely realities of the Climate Crisis? We are not. But maybe with this bill we are beginning to. And we've got to start somewhere. But we know there will be many battles to come.

Update: Salon has a good piece by Joseph Romm of Climate Progress summarizing what the bill provides, what the controversy is about concerning greenhouse gases targets, and about "clean coal." Note these graphs: "The bill would transform the U.S. economy in four decades, replacing the vast majority of American's carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel consumption with a clean energy economy built around energy efficiency and renewable energy.
ACES would push tremendous amounts of low-carbon energy into the electric sector. Obama's stimulus bill had already directed $90 billion toward clean energy, dramatically boosting projections of wind and solar and biomass energy penetration in the near term.
This bill requires a 20 percent CO2 cut by 2020 compared to 2005 levels, a 42 percent cut by 2030 and a whopping 83 percent cut by 2050. On top of that, the bill devotes significant resources to a major global effort to stop deforestation that would add yet more CO2 savings in 2020 equal to 10 percent of current U.S. emissions.

And this comment on the political realities: "It is worth noting that the original Clean Air Act -- first passed in 1963 -- also didn't do enough and was subsequently strengthened many times."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"To think!... To think! It is to lose the thread."

--Paul Valery. Photo: stormclouds over western Pennsylvania, near Altoona.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"A thought is a tremendous mode of excitement."

--Alfred North Whitehead. Painting by Magritte.

Health Care: The Turning Point

The debate over "healthcare" is a complex one, because the topic is. The problems with the health of Americans go beyond medical care or medical care insurance. For example, someone we know consulted a doctor about his son's allergies, and the doctor told him that because of the environment--chemicals, air pollutions and interactions with natural phenomena--four out of five children now have significant allergies. We know of the immense increase in asthma. And the epidemic in obesity, addressed today by the First Lady.

But the primary topic in Washington is the legislation now being crafted to address medical care insurance. It is widely recognized that costs are too high and coverage is too low. There are rabid injustices in the system that are causing real suffering and even death.

The ongoing debate over how to reform the medical care insurance system is inevitably caught up in the usual Washington political games, as "covered" by an attention-deficit media. The real issues and the real human consequences are often overlooked, as for example in the non-coverage of testimony on the tragedies being suffered because of the current medical insurance system.

Coverage and politics are responding to money--very big money. Nate Silver dissects the influence of insurance company lobbying and campaign contribution bucks on Members of Congress, especially centrist Democrats.

That's because the stakes are very high--higher than most people are willing to admit. It's hard for anyone to dispute that medical insurance costs are bankrupting businesses large and small, and government on every level (they are a major cost for schools, for example.) It's hard for anyone with a pulse to deny that the medical insurance industry, which has become utterly dominant since the last attempt to deal with the issue in the 90s, has instituted all kinds of inequities and perpetrated all manner of injustices. The old argument-- that government medical insurance would mean your doctor doesn't decide on your appropriate treatment and you lose choice--can't be taken seriously after decades in which private insurance companies have made those decisions, driving both patients and doctors crazy.

But the argument--which centers on a government medical insurance plan, similar to what Congress itself enjoys, co-existing with private plans-- is even more fundamental. The argument is about whether companies ought to be in the business of making profits, when their business is providing medical insurance. And that argument can be extended to other approaches to the public good. It represents a practical and philosophical switch from the move towards privatization since the 1980s.

It's important to say just what "profit-making" means. Profit isn't about a business bringing in enough money to pay its employees well, and to run its business, including research and development. What "profit-making" means is running the business to primarily make corporate profits above and beyond the costs of the business, to increase stock value and quarterly reports, to use to acquire other businesses for the purpose of larger profits and paper power, and to spend lavishly on advertising, marketing, lobbying and political contributions, to further enhance and guarantee profits, and big bucks for the few at the top.

Since the age of Reagan, running something "like a business" was sold as a way to increase efficiency and service, and foster innovation. All that makes sense, but it isn't what happens in the real world. If the primary purpose is to create profits, then services aren't made more efficient--they are cut. Employees are not well-paid, they are exploited. Corners are cut. Money goes into selling the illusion of good products and services rather than making and providing them. That's partly why Detroit's commercials were so much better than their cars.

We've seen what happens when products and services crucial to the public good traditionally provided by government entities or as public utilities were privatized: with few and usually temporary exceptions, the results were higher costs, more waste and abuses, all for profit, not for purpose.

No one involved in the medical insurance debate wants to address this point so directly. Proponents of a public option don't make the argument, but assume that people see health and medical care as a special case. For example, Paul Krugman summarizes the objection to the public plan in a recent column: Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a “deal-breaker.” Why? Because he didn’t think private insurers could compete: “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day.” Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?

By constructing that question in that way, Krugman rhetorically assumes agreement on the answer. But for some, protecting corporations and their profits is the overriding concern. It is more important than life or death. It is more important than health. For other people, and for the society as a whole.

President Obama is being cagey on the public option. He argues forcefully for it, but refuses to say it is necessary to a law he will accept. This possibly has helped him get concessions from corporations, such as the huge deal he made with drug companies to cut drug costs for seniors. But his arguments for the public plan are compelling, and they go to the heart of the issue, as in his press conference today, when he warned that companies can't continue to make maximum profits by not providing good services. So it seems very unlikely he will support legislation that doesn't include a public plan option.

Recent polls show that an overwhelming percentage of Americans favor a public plan. But a public plan was all but a foregone conclusion in the Clinton administration, until the corporations and their political allies turned the tide. The fight is just beginning, but if reforms that include a public option really happen, it is a turning point in our ability to deal with not only current challenges, but the challenges of the future. It would not mean government runs everything, but that some sense of public good and service may return to important enterprises, and profit-making will no longer be the only value, or the last word in every argument.

Happy Solstice

Revelation

For a veteran of the 60s, who was a happy witness to Solidarity in Poland, the Velvet Revolution, South Africa, all the liberation movements in Eastern Europe as the Wall fell, the Iranian revolutionaries--because after today, that's what they are--exert a powerful and emotional pull. Their choice of the peace sign itself is powerful and irresistible. My barely informed impression is that this is very much a youth movement as well, and most particularly, a movement of women. This photo and others like it collected by Al Rodgers at Kos (who admittedly has an eye for the ladies) make a definite impression, but other reporting support this notion. Roger Cohen in the New York Times--one of the few professionals reporting, along with the citizen reporters on YouTube and Twitter, etc.--makes this point as well: "I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

This revolution by women and the young comes as a revelation to the rest of the world, and a shock to our simplistic media cliches, but it obviously has been building for quite awhile. It's also noteworthy that Iranians now living in cities in the U.S. and all over the world were quick to take to the streets in support of those marching in Tehran.

Exactly what happened in Iran on Saturday is not yet fully known, except the significance of defying the nation's official spiritual as well as political leader. As Andrew Sullivan wrote on his blog: "Whatever happens, the Iranian people have already shown the world what a love of freedom means. Their spirituality, tenacity, wit, and compassion have shone through every moment. Whatever happens, they have proven a heroic nation for the 21st Century. We should honor them for this moment. And stay with them in the days ahead."

Update on Hate

Bob Herbert has a column on the growing extremism and violence of the rabid right (apropos a previous post here), and links it to guns and the need for gun control--one issue that unfortunately the Obama administration is avoiding.

Meanwhile, a front page post at Kos catalogues the latest ugly and incendiary rhetoric from Republicans--officials within the party organization and/or public officials--including more examples of overt racism regarding President Obama.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The opposite of a fact is a falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may well be another profound truth."
Niels Bohr

Two Crises

While the world watches the unfolding Iran crisis--and monitors tweets in what may become the first social networking political revolution--a combined report by 13 U.S. government agencies warns of the slowly unfolding Climate Crisis, which is likely to be even more consequential, but lacks the visible drama that media connects to the cause, which is global heating.

According to the New York Times story: " Even if the nation takes significant steps to slow emissions of heat-trapping gases, the impact of global warming is expected to become more severe in coming years, the report says, affecting farms and forests, coastlines and floodplains, water and energy supplies, transportation and human health."

Dealing with the inevitable effects of climate change is going to cost money and demand attention in increasing quantities. This is the other Climate Crisis that no one is talking about. Among the many conceptual challenges posed by the Climate Crisis is the time lag between cause and effect. The effects we are feeling--even if we don't acknowledge the causes--and the effects we will feel increasingly in the coming decade, according to this report and many other indicators, were caused by greenhouse gases emitted in the past.

But the truly devastating changes that are likely in the farther future are being caused by today's emissions, and tomorrow's. So we have to deal with two crises at the same time, one of which is invisible, and the other at the moment is not widely understood as consequences of greenhouse gas pollution. Our challenge will be--our challenge now is--to deal with both causes and effects simultaneously. It's probably the greatest challenge humanity will face for the forseeable future.

Additional perspectives on this report from the SF Chronicle, and more details with link on effects in specific parts of the U.S. in CS Monitor.

Stop Coddling These Extremists

I'm currently still out here on the fringe of the City of Champions, Pittsburgh, PA, and because of circumstances too boring to relate, my Internet access and blogtime have been spotty. But if I had blogged here last week, it would have looked a lot like Frank Rich's column in the NY Times on Sunday, about the atmosphere of hate being exploited and inflated by Rabid Right politicians and media bloviators.

As Rich points out, even a FOX News anchor is warning of the extreme and violent email he is seeing, particularly aimed at President Obama. I would add a few thoughts to Rich's links and commentary:

First, the racism that I call recessive racism is usually repressed because it is societally taboo. But when established, highly paid megaphones legitimize it, it can come out with frenzied force. There is nothing rational about it at that point.

Second, the motivation for enabling violent extremism may seem like something else to those doing it, or the reasons may seem principled, but clearly a great deal of it is about cynical politics, about ego and power and especially it is about money and power. This is especially true for the media mouths who incite it. The commercial culture as well as the political culture has some responsibility to place limits of legitimacy, because the bottom line in society is not corporate profit or personal greed.

The additional temptation is that in this noisy, attention-deficit atmosphere, the extreme and borderline violent commands attention. But other societies have learned to their great sorrow just how dangerous it is to let things get so extreme that the violent unhinged feel justified in behavior they can't understand or control.

When an attempt is made on the President's life, it will be too late to be sorry that this is going on, and that this society enables the enablers, particularly by admiring anything anybody does that results in riches and celebrity.

Whenever there is a hate crime in a given neighborhood or city, the marchers come out to show that the community won't stand for it. I don't know if that's the approach that has to happen on a larger scale, but something has to more effectively communicate the larger society's belief that this hate and violence is unacceptable, repugnant and to be condemned, and those that engage it in, encourage and enable it, are to be condemned and cast outside legitimate societal roles, not given international media forums, huge contracts, or public office. It's time for zero tolerance for media and political incitement of perhaps the most momentous hate crime imaginable.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Anyway, that's in large part what economics is--people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven't just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure, and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful."

A character in Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Transformational

Even though I'm traveling and not monitoring hailing or other frequencies in the usual profusion, I am happy to take note of President Obama's speech in Cairo--a daring, risky, straightforward text, which Richard Engels of NBC News, who heard it in Arabic, said was well crafted for that language and culture.

The primary audience was the 1.5 billion people in the Muslim world, and reporters say a lot were listening. First reactions were very positive. Engel said people were listening with their mouths hanging open--they'd never heard an American President speak this way. Andrea Mitchell said the speech was potentially transformational in terms of U.S. relations to the Muslim world, and transforming the Obama presidency.

But the transformational aspect began not with the words but with the sight--if for a moment westerners saw Barack Obama through Muslim eyes, they might get a hint of that. Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States.

His speech sought conciliation based on equal respect and treatment--he called for an end of stereotyping Muslims, and also the stereotyping in the Muslim world of America and Americans. He made pronouncements that offended some Israelis, some Arabs (particularly governments and powers that be) and some in the west, but he set a new agenda and a new tone. The largest paper in Egypt proclaimed, he is the one we have been waiting for. A citizen proclaimed to a reporter, Yes we can!

A speech of course is not everything, but everything may depend on it. It's another necessary if not sufficient piece of the puzzle that may fit together to make a better future.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The word 'gratitude' has equivalents in every language and in each tongue the range of meanings is abundant. In the Romance languages this breadth spans the spiritual and the physical, from the divine grace conceded to men to save them from error and death, to the bodily grace of the dancing girl or the feline leaping through undergrowth. Grace means pardon, forgiveness, favor, benefice, inspiration; it is a form of address, a pleasing style of speaking or painting, a gesture expressing politeness, and, in short, an act that reveals spiritual goodness. Grace is gratuitous; it is a gift. The person who receives it, the favored one, is grateful for it; if he is not base, he expresses gratitude."

Octavio Paz

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Alexandria and its scholars, by contrast, never mistook the true nature of the past; they knew it to be the source of an ever-shifting present in which new readers engaged with old books which became new in the reading process. Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth."

Alberto Manguel

The Library At Night

California Falling

It's finally happening, California is falling into the sea.

The lifeboats are out. Some have yachts--let's face it, some have battleships--but most are counting their provisions and figuring out how long they can survive, while checking the old rubber boat for leaks. And then there are those who don't have to check---they have nothing that will float.

It's something of a slow motion disaster, especially if you see its origin--as Paul Krugman does, as I do, and as a lot of people did at the time--in the beginning of the moronic inferno with the passage of Prop 13 more than three decades ago. The idea was that California could afford everything, like the best school system in the nation, without paying for it. That brand of magical thinking, which is just barely disguised kill-the-government social Darwinism, let the individual rich enrich themselves even more with no responsibility to the community that supports their ability to get rich, and at the expense of everyone else--has provided, among other things, the now worst school system in the country.

Now the Terminator is living up to his name. Governor S. has interpreted the rejection of phony ballot initiatives as a rejection of any new taxes--although this question was not on any of the ballots, and this is his own fantasy. So he is terminating entire health and education programs and crippling others, and so the political idiocy in Sacramento is going to be paid for by the poor, the sick and the young. And eventually--perhaps a not very distant eventually--everyone in the state, and then in the country.

These cuts will wind up costing the state money--billions of it--in costs they will cause and in lost federal support, and will have a ripple effect that could turn out to be a slow motion tsunami, although these days the slow motion part is questionable. To vary the cliche, California is gripped by the perfect storm--a collapsing economy that's draining the state of revenue, leading to cuts which will inevitably push the economy to collapse faster, as job and pay losses ripple through every sector.

In the area of education, prospective college students will lose grant and loan money while the two state university systems take yet another hit. The non-elite system, which our local Humboldt State belongs to, has forced deeper budget cuts every year, and there's only so much damage in a relatively short time that a system can take. It's not that money is necessarily being spent in the best way, but it's getting to the point that a total reorganization will be needed, and that costs even more money.

That's the other aspect of the perfect storm--local K-12 schools and local governments have all been turning themselves inside out to cut their budgets every year, and now there are these even greater cuts. Teachers in one L.A. school have gone on a hunger strike to protest. And that's likely to be just the beginning.

Huge cuts in health programs are already being forecast to eventually cost more money as well as lives, and that's on top of losing federal money, which is often many times what the state is spending. A sensible reading of the rejection of the propositions is that voters want the legislature and the governor to do their jobs and make law that addresses this crisis. But the Terminator has chosen to interpret it as yet another anti-tax crusade. So some are dubbing him Governor Hoover.

Ignoring the Real Work

Here's a story about a story that's not really news because it's what usually happens. Check your favorite news source and chances are the story this story is about doesn't appear. Then look at what does. And it becomes clearer once again why we're not making more progress. And that's the story.

The story the story is about is this: the Obama Administration announced a $4 billion commitment to upgrading and retrofitting public housing as part of the Green Jobs initiative. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced $500 million will go to train workers for these jobs, which will include installing insulation, new windows, etc. $50 million will be directed to regions hardest hit by the Great Recession. All this was authorized by the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known to twitterbrains as "the stim."

This program represents a first triumph for Van Jones, the advocate for green jobs who is now a White House advisor. "This is not some abstract, theoretical thing. By the end of the year you are going to see people who have no jobs, high-energy bills and no hope get jobs and see opportunity," he said.

When state and local governments are cutting back spending and services, particularly to lower income people, this is an unusual and very welcome bit of good news. But maybe that's the problem. There's not enough conflict in it, and it's not trivial enough, and there's nothing stupid to tweet.

Oh wait, there is. In the course of making the announcement in Denver, Vice President Biden's teleprompter didn't work, and he made a joke about President Obama and his use of teleprompters. And so when this event did get into a newspaper or onto a broadcast, the Biden joke--or gaffe, or possible gaffe--became the story.

To get the story of the green jobs program in America required going to a British newspaper, the Guardian, although the environmental site WorldChanging made it a prominent link. That tells the story right there, doesn't it?

The Only Hope

Literally every day now, new evidence and testimony arrives to warn of the accumulating perils of the Climate Crisis. To avert the worst of these effects, there are two necessary efforts: reducing severely the amount of greenhouse gas pollution lofting into the atmosphere, and increasing the proportion of clean energy generation. These are interelated not just environmentally and in terms of energy production, but economically.

Carbon reduction and clean energy are the best hopes for the future of human civilization going forward from this point in its development, and life on the planet as we know it. Now it looks as if it is also the best hope in the present for the world economy.

Paul Krugman notes this, as he suggests the world has at least temporarily averted economic catastrophe. But since this is a global Great Recession affecting most national and regional economies within the deeply interrelated global economy, there is no way for an ultimate recovery through national advantages. As Krugman says, we can't all export our way to prosperity, for we know of no other planet to trade with. The only answer is massive new economic activity, spurred by new technological developments. And the only viable candidate is clean energy technology.

But incentive to develop clean energy economies depends on a new economic playing field that no longer provides advantage to the temporarily and artificially cheaper dirty energy. That means carbon caps. The Reuters report on Krugman's comments continues:

Global recovery could come about through more investment by major corporations, the emergence of a major technological innovation to match the IT revolution of the 1990s or government moves on climate change. "Legislation that will establish a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases' emissions is moving forward," he said, referring to the U.S. Congress.

"When the Europeans probably follow suit, and the Japanese, and negotiations begin with developing countries to work them into the system, that will provide enormous incentive for businesses to start investing and prepare for the new regime on emissions... But that's a hope, that's not a certainty."

The potential payoff is tremendous. A world business summit organized to examine cap and trade plans worldwide estimates that the U.S. alone would gain 2 million jobs generating a quarter of its electric power from renewables.

Global business leaders, political and environmental leaders in various nations including the U.S., are all arguing about the hows of carbon caps, and the how much by when. But at least the direction of hope is becoming clearer, and there is a sense of urgency. As environmental officials from 15 nations including the U.S. and China meet to discuss all this in Paris, there is one agreement so far:

"No one contests the urgency of the problem," French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said. "No one contests the probably irreversible character of the problem."

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"You're not a bad person. You're a good person who bad things have happened to. Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters--we've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." --Sirius Black to Harry Potter, movie version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Skills of Peace Today

Peace does not happen by magic. It is not the mere absense of war. This world is never without conflict. Waging peace requires at least as many skills as waging war does.

The kind of organization, dedication to service and discipline developed over too many centuries to wage war could in some ways be applied to waging peace. Some of those functions are in fact falling to the armed forces--the "peace-keeping" and humanitarian and "nation-building" missions.

When such missions became most prominent in Bosnia, military leaders looked around and noticed that they had no training for them, and nowhere to get that training. Presumably this has changed, because in his commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy, President Obama said this:

"Marines, we need you to defeat the insurgent and the extremist. But we also need you to work with the tribal sheik and local leaders from Anbar to Kandahar who want to build a better future for their people.

Naval aviators and flight officers, we need you to dominate the airspace in times of conflict, but also to deliver food and medicine in times of humanitarian crisis. And surface warfare officers and submariners, we need you to project American power across the vast oceans, but also to protect American principles and values when you pull into that foreign port, because for so many people around the world, you are the face of America."

This only hints at the new roles that, sometimes by default, the U.S. military must undertake, and let's hope their training is adapting to those roles.

Someday the essence of military organization and the best ideals--of service, self-sacrifice, discipline, applying skills and attention to the greater good--may well result in an "army" that fights the effects of the Climate Crisis, feeds the hungry, brings medicine to the afflicted, helps to resolve conflicts and build community. This army--or indeed the existing military-- will need to learn from those who are right now working on perfecting and teaching the skills of peace--from large-scale peacekeeping and diplomatic efforts, to interpersonal conflict management, to the skills of individual inner peace that make all the rest easier and more fulfilling.

Remembering those who sacrificed their lives in war should not be only the occasion for picnics and TV war movie marathons. It is another moment to focus on the skills of peace, and their study, and the hope to study war no more.

California poppies, sure sign of spring in Arcata, but there's not as many as there used to be, as more wildflower territory becomes concrete or otherwise de-lifed. Click photo to real life proportions.

Follow-Up: The New York Review

A few weeks ago, I posted here about why I value the New York Review of Books, and on an impulse, posted it at Daily Kos. It got only about a dozen comments and fewer than 20 recommendations, but eventually it appeared on the Rescued Diary list.

Then a few days later I got an email from an editorial assistant at the New York Review, which contained a PDF version of a brief note from Robert Silvers, who has edited the Review from its first issue in 1963.

It said: I was touched by what you said about the paper. During 46 years, I’ve never read a piece in which a writer said what was actually in an issue.

Awesome, and yet, I was aghast: nobody, in 46 years, had written about what was actually in an issue? Yet for 46 years, this man kept it going, and kept its quality and voice. That's truly awesome.

Although there were only 14 comments at kos, two of them stand out for what they say about the particular effects of this periodical.

From Dana Houle:

I grew up in a place where nobody went to college. My family also got three newspapers a day, and they bought me books because I was expected to go to college, but you can't say I "grew up around books." Nobody in my family had graduated high school. When I graduated high school, I couldn't write a complete sentence. I went to community college, got caught up on my basics, and then transfered to a pretty good state university. The first term I was there, a historian, a Viennese-Jewish emigre who came to the US as a teen, worked as a skilled craftsman while in grad school, and a man of the working class left, took an interest in me. He could tell I was trying to become educated, that I had many interests, but numerous holes in my knowledge. His suggestion was that I should start reading the New York Review of Books, every article, every edition. It's one of the best things that anyone has ever done for me. And the NYRB is one of the most enjoyable and invigorating things in my life.

and from someone else:

I used to think I was really intelligent until I picked up a friend's copy of the New York Review of Books and tried to read it. I could feel a whooshing gust as the contents went right over my head. Maybe if Jon Stewart did a Comedy Central version, I would catch on?

If you don't know what we're all talking about, the online version is here. But it's the full paper version that means the most. Here's the wikipedia history.

These particularly dark, velvety Irises that Margaret planted in the front yard are currently blooming. Click the photo to enlarge and get a good look. They are actually darker than this, though. Digital color just isn't there yet.

Convergences

Updates 5/20: A NY Times editorial on the case for these new emissions standards as "a huge step forward in the effort to limit greenhouse gases and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil" as well as "With this deal, America also wins back a bit of energy independence. But the biggest winner could be the atmosphere." Also indication that the climate and energy bill described below will be voted out of committee, on its way to passage.


For all the pain it is causing and will yet cause, the Great Recession is also providing unforeseen opportunities to improve the chances of a better future. The difference is who is President. And it isn't the Recession itself so much as the realities about our past and our future that it brings into sharper focus.

Tuesday, President Obama is expected to unveil new fuel mileage standards for American vehicles that will "mean a 30 percent reduction in global-warming emissions from new vehicles by 2016, with improvements beginning in the 2011 model year," according to this article at Grist. Though Republicans in Congress and in Washington will probably scream about it, the proposal may well have wide support where it counts--apart from the public and environmentalists, from business, including car companies.

Why? The Great Recession not only makes the auto industry more dependent on the federal government, but reduces the margin for error while providing an opportunity to chart a new course to its future prosperity. A number of states have enacted their own standards--California conspicuously--and a single federal standard saves the car companies money, plus it gives them a real blueprint for what they will be expected to do for the next decade:

The move will please the Auto Alliance, the major industry group representing car makers, which has been asking for one standard that unifies emission and fuel-economy standards across the whole country. “We recognize that greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles need to be reduced,” Charles Territo, a spokesperson for the Alliance, told Grist last month. “At the end of the day, what’s most important is that we have a single, national standard that is achievable, but that is aggressive and cost-effective.”

The standards are also more gradual, giving car companies more time to adapt. Consumers will gradually pay more, at least by today's estimates, though their costs will be offset by spending less on gasoline. This is no small deal--some say it is the biggest and most effective way so far to cut greenhouse gases. It eventually will "equate to taking 177 million cars off the road, or shutting down 194 coal-fired power plants."

This is separate from the cap-and-trade bill now in Congress, the Waxman-Markey bill that now has wide support. Despite Congressional GOPer promises to offer hundreds of nonsense amendments to tie things up, the bill is expected to become law this year. For some environmentalists it is too modest, and fossil fuel industries are pouring millions into opposing it. But on Monday, Paul Krugman made the best case I've read for why cap-and-trade will work. It's estimated that in lessening greenhouse gases, this bill will equate to take another 500 million cars off the road. "After all the years of denial, after all the years of inaction, we finally have a chance to do something major about climate change," Krugman concludes. "Waxman-Markey is imperfect, it’s disappointing in some respects, but it’s action we can take now. And the planet won’t wait."

Supporting the likelihood of both of these efforts are polls which suggest strong public support for regulating greenhouse gases, even if it costs.

One of the reasons Krugman favors cap-and-trade over a carbon tax is that it's international in scope. Everyone knows that without India and especially China, there isn't much hope. So these hints of secret and ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and China on Climate Crisis measures, plus public moves (like Secretary of State Clinton stating that U.S.-China relations should center around climate change) suggests a dramatic agreement may not be far off.

There's other good news in the climate crisis arena: from promising new technology to a suggestion that the Great Recession slowdown coupled with an imminent cap-and-trade system means that the growth of greenhouse gas emissions may have ended in the U.S. But continuing at the current rate will continue to make matters worse--we need to start cutting, and eventually, cut deeply.

Unfortunately however, there has been no good news in what's actually happening in the environment, or in predictions of what is likely to happen. Most of that is getting worse. This includes the widely reported study that cut in half the prediction of how much sea levels will rise as a result of melting from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Look under the headline and see that even if this study is correct, it doesn't mean sea levels will be half of previous predictions everywhere. In fact, they will be even higher in certain places--like the West Coast of the United States. Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, etc. And also the East Coast. Boston, New York City. With impact on Washington, D.C.

Fascinating--and Logical

A lot of controversy, some anger and what's become the all-too-usual hyperbole and invective have accompanied recent decisions from the Obama administration. But beneath the often deceptive headlines there's something we're maybe not used to: intelligence. Maybe the decision is wrong, but it was arrived at with reasons and with a logical process that includes many sources of information and debate. In a new interview in Newsweek, President Obama describes the step-by-step process he undertook in making decisions on important matters like Afghanistan. And he says:

But one of the things I've actually been encouraged by—and I learned during the campaign—was the American people, I think, not only have a toleration but also a hunger for explanation and complexity, and a willingness to acknowledge hard problems. I think one of the biggest mistakes that is made in Washington is this notion you have to dumb things down for the public. I've always been struck by the fact that, if you can get me in a room with a group of people, even who disagree with me violently on an issue, they'll still take the time to listen. They might not, at the end of it, agree with me, but having seen how I'm thinking about a problem, having a sense of how I'm making decisions, that I understand their point of view, that I can actually make their argument for them, and that that's part of the decision-making process, it gives them a sense, at least, that they've been heard, and I think clarifies—well, it pushes us away from the dogmas and caricatures that I think get in the way of good policymaking and a more civil tone in our politics."

Later in the interview he mentions that he's just screened the new Star Trek movie in the White House, after people kept telling him he's Spock--and then he flashed the Vulcan greeting. He says he was a Star Trek fan from the age of 10.

The Star Trek connection and Spock both make sense. Spock was a symbol of intelligence--of what he called logic--when American policy in the late 60s was crazy, defying sense and logic. By the 80s it was even worse: the complete rule of the cynical and deluded selling patently stupid self-destructive policies to a hapless public glorying in a consumption based on dumbness. I keep thinking of a title of a book of essays about the 80s by Martin Amis--it was called The Moronic Inferno, and that's still the best description of the 80s, when our current disasters were born, brought to maturity by Cheney and the Bushites.

Spock stood for intelligence, which to him meant ethics as well: because they were logical. Gene Roddenberry said that Star Trek's popularity proved that ordinary people were ready for that kind of future, and that they were "light years ahead of their petty governments and visionless leaders."

We have a leader now with vision, who models intelligence. We're not used to this. We're not over Bush. We're not even over the '80s. We're still surrounded by the moronic inferno. But there's at least a light in the White House. Not just empathy but intelligence. May it live long and prosper.