Emerson for the Day

"The moral nature is not a patch of light here, whilst the social world is a lump of darkness there, but tends incessantly to rectify and ennoble the whole circumference of facts." Emerson, journal November 6, 1839

Though this photo is from awhile ago, it's been a moody, rainy start to May so far. So why not more empathy in politics talk, in the posts below? And happy Cinquo de Mayo!

The Other Side of Empathy

Empathy is not just about identifying with the good guys. It's also getting into the heads of people who do destructive stuff. PBS just finished running the latest BBC dramatic version of Little Dorrit, the novel by Charles Dickens, and Dickens made a living getting into the heads and hearts and souls of heroes and villains, and especially the people who switch between being one to being the other.

President Obama has a contemporary novelist's approach when he talked to a writer for the New York Times Magazine on the subject of the financial future. He started out being deftly analytical, saying that the financial sector is not going to be the same even after recovery. But when asked whether we'd "miss it" he went straight to the kind of detail that a novelist would notice:

"We will miss it in the sense that as a consequence of 25-year-olds getting million-dollar bonuses, they were willing to pay $100 for a steak dinner and that waiter was getting the kinds of tips that would make a college professor envious. And so some of the dynamic of the financial sector will have some trickle-down effects, particularly in a place like Manhattan. "

It's a portrait of a culture of excess that Dickens would appreciate. We can laugh at that 25-year old, or react with envy, anger or satisfaction that this will change. But Obama knows that for these people--the young executives and the waiters--life is going to change in ways they may not like or be prepared for. It's a human problem, for them as well as for the unemployed auto worker in Detroit, or the young and sincere starting their careers and their families in companies and jobs that are going to change, having nothing to do with anything they personally did or didn't do.

But Dickens, like Obama, would also see the larger picture. (A key plot point in Little Dorrit after all is a financial bubble and a Ponzi scheme, with familiarly devastating effects.) Obama continued:

But I actually think that there was always an unsustainable feel about what had happened on Wall Street over the last 10, 15 years.... Wall Street will remain a big, important part of our economy, just as it was in the ’70s and the ’80s. It just won’t be half of our economy. And that means that more talent, more resources will be going to other sectors of the economy. And I actually think that’s healthy. We don’t want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader. We want some of them to go into engineering, and we want some of them to be going into computer design."

He also talked about some of the kinds of jobs in the new green economy that use skills that mean something of value to the people who have them, like jobs "where you’ve got a bunch of welders and tradesmen who are now retrofitting buildings. They’re not performing the same kind of manufacturing that their fathers might have, but with similar skill sets they are now making hospitals and schools and office buildings much more energy efficient, and then that’s providing enormous value to the economy as a whole."

There's empathy that informs ideas of what's needed in a positive sense, but also a kind of empathy to understand the impacts and therefore the resistance to change. This means that President Obama doesn't just listen to the point of view of opponents as different positions on issues, but from their perspective as people. This is a key to two-way communication. He may not convince every corporation that enjoys tax havens overseas to support his proposals to close those loopholes, announced Monday. But he's going to convince some--especially those who are doing it because their competitors are doing it.

Having empathy with someone doesn't mean therefore you're going to change your principles or policies. It isn't weakness, though our conflict-driven media storylines would like to depict it as such. It's part of understanding, that informs intelligent action, and helps to both form policy and communicate the need for it.

The Justice of Empathy

President Obama speaks frequently about the need for empathy. He did so in outlining the qualities he will be looking for in choosing a new Supreme Court Justice to replace David Souter, who announced that he'd like to retire at the end of the current Court term in June.

Even before he named the usual judicial qualities--respect for the rule of law, deep understanding of the Constitution, President Obama said:

"Now, the process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. So I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives -- whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.

I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes..."

Obama is likely the first President to repeatedly use the term "empathy." The "pathy" part (from the Greek) is about feeling. The "em" (also from the Greek) in this case means "to cause [one] to be in [another.] Sympathy is close but different, both in practice and in its roots. "Sym" is a prefix similiar to "co-," so it means "with" or "together."

Sometimes the difference is described as: "I feel sympathy for what you are going through." Whereas empathy is more like "I feel what you are going through." Sympathy may be more general, but empathy--while it can lead to wider action--begins with the very specific. As the terms are used, sympathy often implies pity, assuming the superior position of one over another. Empathy implies equality.

Both sympathy and empathy require acts of imagination, but the imaginative identification for empathy is arguably stronger. Empathy often requires the power of story. President Obama reads ten letters from Americans each day, to learn their stories. He renews his empathy.

But often the stories that evoke empathy in many of us require imaginative telling as well as hearing. This is why good storytelling--in dramatic and literary forms--is as important to a sense of justice and a society that values equality as any legislation or social or political action in a democracy. This special kind of dreaming is important to the soul of the future, which must cultivate, value and commit to empathy.

In a recent Times Literary Supplement review of a novel by Nobel Laureate J. M. G. Le Clezio of France, Natasha Lehrer wrote: "If empathy is at the heart of the novelist's undertaking, then there is no doubt that Le Clezio deserves his accolades." This sense that empathy is at the heart of the novelist's undertaking is a salutary thought for all of us, including novelists.

"I am to invite men drenched in Time to recover themselves and come out of time, and taste their native immortal air. I am to fire with what skill I can the artillery of sympathy and emotion. I am to indicate constantly, though all unworthy, the Ideal and Holy Life, the life within life, the Forgotten Good, the Unknown Cause in which we sprawl and sin. I am to try the magic of sincerity, that luxury permitted only to kings and poets. I am to celebrate the spiritual powers in their infinite contrast to the mechanical powers and the mechanical philosophy of this time. I am to console the brave sufferers under evils whose end they cannot see by appeals to the great optimism, self-affirmed in all bosums."

R.W. Emerson, Journal entry, October 18, 1839.

Coo Coo Ca Cockatoo

Get an early start on the weekend: Rock out with Snowball, the dancing cockatoo. Turns out humans aren't the only dancers on the planet. Duh. (Despite the stutters in this video--the BBC has a better one--this is real, at least according to this accompanying story.)

Swine

The flu formerly known as swine may or may not amount to much this spring--evidence so far is not so much, though WHO scientists caution it's still too early to tell. It's both fascinating and disconcerting to hear doctors and medical reporters say contradictory things about it--for instance, on why younger patients have been hit harder (I've heard both that it's because of undeveloped immune systems, and immune systems that are too good and produce stuff that blocks up the lungs in fighting the infection). But one thing I heard that makes at least common sense is that this is a dress rehearsal: flu of any kind usually weakens in the spring and pretty much disappears in the summer, but a new spring strain typically recurs the following fall.

As a political opportunity it's also losing focus. For the GOPers, there's not enough travail to nail the Obama Administration with anything, and for Dems there's not enough to nail the GOPers with the consequences of crippling public health and killing flu prep money in the stim by calling it pork. Or of holding up key health appointments for unrelated political purposes. Even the entertainment value of the secessionist Texas gov begging for federal help didn't last long. The fickle national attention span moved on, before we got a real good look at who the swine really are.

But in the end it's a good thing: politics and public health crises don't mix, as was evidenced the last time the U.S. tried to deal with swine flu in the 70s. Neither party's administration distinguished themselves in that debacle. The Obama Administration's cool, competent and caring approach is the appropriate one.

A Transformational President

It's 100 dizzying days later, and President Barack Obama is already being called a transformational leader, which is what we needed and what the American people voted for. His job approval rating in all major polls is above 60% and his personal approval rating in the NBC poll is above 80%. In these dire times, America is happy with its leader, and more hopeful than it was. Today both houses of Congress passed his budget, which builds on the Recovery Act to address pressing needs and future investment. Secretary of HHS Sebellius was confirmed yesterday, although that news was swamped by PA Senator Specter joining the Democratic Party, which should help at least symbolically in passing the remaining major elements of the President's agenda for this year. The transformation is on: full speed ahead.

"The future must bear within it every past."--Wallace
Stevens. Photo: Eagle Nebula from Hubble (NASA).

Rahm was Right: Read the New York Review of Books!

Update: A version of this made the Rescued list at Daily Kos.

When the release of the torture memos was criticized, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel responded, "Go get the New York Review of Books!"
He's right--and for more reasons than he meant specifically in that interview.

He was talking about the Mark Danner articles about the secret Red Cross report on U.S. torture, that ran in the April 9 and April 30 issues. But this kind of reporting, which may seem odd to those who don't know the tradition of the New York Review of Books, is only one reason to read this periodical.

As it happens, my subscription is up for renewal. So I'm about to tell you why I'm ponying up to renew it. The first reason is that tradition of reporting represented by Danner, with the kind of courage and in the kind of detail that got me reading this periodical a long time ago.

In the mid and late 60s, when the very young New York Review was among the few publications to expose the lies supporting the Vietnam War. It did so with essays and reporting, and with--perhaps most surprising to readers today--reviews of books.

I recall one vividly. It was a review of Air War: Vietnam by Frank Harvey, which simply reported on the reality of U.S. bombing and the devastation it caused. The review by author Robert Crichton (which is excerpted on the back of the paperback edition of the book)reproduced sections of the book and summarized others. The book had been published some time before and was unnoticed until this review.

For those of us not in New York or even on a large politically active campus, sources of information were few. We got pamphlets etc. from various antiwar organizations, but we relied on just a few sources, like the magazine Ramparts in San Francisco, a scattering of articles in Esquire and other magazines, but most of all, the New York Review of Books.

This was important, because opposition to the war was fed by facts, despite the movies you may have seen. Teach-ins were important and substantive. We were steeped in the history of southeast Asia, in the experiences of colonial regimes, in geopolitical theory and realities,as well as the suppressed facts about what was actually happening in Vietnam. So the recent Mark Danner pieces are squarely within that tradition. (They are online here and here.)

But just as important as the reporting and political discussion is the context of books and the culture of intelligence. We exist in an interrelated world where it is impossible to understand politics--and such complex and emotional issues as torture as an interrogation technique--without knowing as much as we can about what humans are thinking and feeling in a given time, and where historically those thoughts and feelings come from, as well as what light current science can shed on what seems inexplicable. Plus it's a big world.

There are lots of books published about all kinds of important and fascinating subjects, as well as novels and volumes of poetry that provide their own kinds of information on our world. The New York Review's writers--among the best writers and scholars around---write in depth and enough length to give us the gist of the books under discussion (and let's face it, it's unlikely we'll read all of them, so this is about as much as we'll learn from them) as well as trenchant commentary and informed context.

The April 9 issue, containing the first Danner piece, is a great example. It has Pico Iyer reporting on the current situation in Tibet and the Dalai Lama. It's relatively brief yet covers a lot of ground incisively, informed by personal experience, so it's probably the best you could read anywhere.

How about connecting the economic crisis to the foundation ideas of major religions, as well as the planet, the past and the future? Novelist Margaret Atwood does in a new nonfiction book, and John Gray's review describes and summarizes it in a tantalizing way.

There's also an interesting review of Robert Kaiser's book on lobbying in Washington, Anthony Lewis on a book about lawyers, pieces on the South African president who followed Mandella and the courts in Cambodia.

But in this same issue is a review of a new novel by Zoe Heller, Freeman Dyson writing about a new book on a unified physics theory, Jeremy Bernstein on Big Science. Books on Lincoln, what makes the French French, and Flannery O'Connor.

There is also the best article I've read on the poetry of John Ashbery, by Dan Chiasson. It's trenchant and comprehensive, and without jargon, cant or any obscurity. It is a great example of what the New York Review publishes at its best. I believe in the liberal arts ideal as well as liberal ideals--and this publication brings both to life, in the moment.

This is the Spring Books issue, so not every issue is this big or good, but it gives an accurate idea of the range. Politically as in the arts and sciences, the Review gives space to well articulated arguments of various persuasions--in fact, the new May 14 issue has an article calling for the limitation of presidential power by Senator Arlen Specter.

The New York Review places some but not all of its articles on the Internet, so the paper edition is essential. My biggest problem with the Review is the same now as it always was: getting to read all that I want to before the next issue arrives. This year I did pretty well through the fall and winter until March. Now I'm behind. But the publication schedule slows in the summer (it's normally every two weeks), so I'm looking forward to some hours in the sun catching up. Right now though I have to make sure the issues keep coming, by renewing my subscription.

State of the Hope: The First 100 Days

The headlines say he's touched off a firestorm on both right and left on the torture issue. The headlines say the banks are resisting his proposed credit card reforms. The blogs say he's trying to do too much, he's not doing enough. The Republican obsessed cable shows duly report and debate every flaky pompous self-serving crass piece of idiocy anyone says or belches about how he's ineffective and wrongheaded.

Oh yeah?

The Associated Press:

"For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future.

Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington."

Act Locally

For Earth Day 2009, President Obama went to an Iowa factory that manufactures wind power turbines to continue his economic argument for ecological sanity: "The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy—it’s a choice between prosperity and decline,” said Obama. “The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.”

He spoke in support of the EPA finding that greenhouse gases are harmful pollution and should be regulated. He also announced that the federal government is beginning the process of leasing offshore areas for electricity generation projects using wind and ocean currents.

That's good news for us here on the North Coast, where interest in using wave power has already generated some encouraging studies and discussion. Apparently our offshore area is prime for this kind of power.

Federal leadership and seed money are crucial, but local and state efforts are where things happen. California continues to lead in the attempts to control carbon emissions. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that "The California Air Resources Board is expected to approve on Thursday a far-reaching rule called the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, the biggest step yet in the state's campaign to slash greenhouse gas emissions."

The Bay Area is also participating if not leading in innovation to foster a green economy. Another Chronicle story reports: Several Bay Area companies, including Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Google Inc., were recognized Tuesday for pioneering environmental-saving innovations that cut costs and create new business. Smaller businesses are also recognized.

But there are other kinds of efforts that are just as crucial in safeguarding our planetary resources. Back when Earth Day started, so did recycling efforts (which so many experts said people would never do. They were wrong.) The full and too often forgotten mantra was "Reuse, Reduce, Recycle." One of the worst things we're doing that's poisoning our shared resources and causing geometrically increasing damage is dumping huge amounts of stuff, a lot of it toxic. No one seems to want to talk about it, but we're rapidly busy filling up and poisoning the earth with millions of cell phones a year.

But even with ordinary, non-toxic stuff, we've lost the ethic of repair and reuse. The Great Recession however is starting to reverse those practices. Yet another Chronicle piece reports on a suddenly thriving business: SCRAP, or Scroungers' Center for Reusable Art Parts. It's more than art parts now--it's become a place where companies with surplus stuff (because they're downsizing or going out of business or just changing inventory) unload without discarding, and where people with various needs can buy the stuff cheap.

The stuff includes clothing from Banana Republic, a textile company and an architecture firm, for instance. There are other companies besides SCRAP doing similar work in the Bay Area, most of which have been around for years (SCRAP for 30 years or so.) The difference is interest--and more stuff, being reused in more ways. "We used to have people come for things to accessorize. Now we have more people making their own clothing."

Looking around, Kraft said, "This was all going to be garbage. Companies probably would have just thrown it away. It's such great stuff."

Blue Planet

Last Chance

We're probably down to the wire on addressing the Climate Crisis to avoid planetary tragedy of almost unimaginable proportions and duration. The worst of it could begin later in this century, unless we stop the process now. It's humankind's last chance to redeem itself, before it become the species that kills the others. The experiment in complex life that didn't work out.

So optimism is a relative thing, and hope springs this spring in Washington. First the EPA finding on Friday: "said rising sea levels, increased flooding and more intense heat waves and storms that come with climate change are a threat to public health and safety. The agency predicted that warming will worsen other pollution problems such as smog." Declaring greenhouse gases pollution a threat to health and safety signals that the EPA will take steps to regulate it, even if Congress doesn't act.

This week could be the beginning of an historic shift, as Climate Crisis legislation comes forward for consideration. Apart from the important shift represented by the Obama administration, there is growing support if not yet consensus. "For the first time ever, we have got the political actors all aligned," said Richard Lazarus, Georgetown University environmental activist and author. "That is not enough to get a law passed, but that is a huge start. We haven't been close to that before." So the work is just beginning.

Of course, there is tremendous opposition, especially from fossil fuel conglomerates, as well as their sad sack know-nothing minions, tea-baggers all.

But it's getting harder for reasonable people not to see what's happening, or to see that the solutions are beneficial anyway. Forbes magazine has just named Denmark as the best country in the world for business--partly because it has one of the strongest committments in the world to reduce carbon, and a relentless effort to conserve energy and develop and use clean energy technology.

The dangers of not confronting the crisis--a frequent topic at international gatherings, like the recent one of Latin American nations-- were outlined by Energy Secretary Steven Chu as comparable to an Ice Age in reverse. Chu is direct, as is President Obama's chief negotiator on the next round of Climate Crisis international agreements, Todd Stern. They know the reality and what is at stake. The deck at this point is stacked against all of us: we may be too late, we may do too little. But we have to try, and if we've got any chance at all, now is the time to seriously start.

April is the New May

In 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted lilacs in some 70 locations in the northeast, and noted when they first bloomed. Figuring that the onset of spring was signalled by the lilacs blooming, the USDA was trying to help determine the best time for planting crops, like corn. But what they now have is a record of when lilacs bloomed in the past 44 years. And they are blooming as much as two weeks earlier now than in 1965.

Other evidence of early spring (and summer) onset is discussed in new books by Amy Seidl (Early Spring) and Stephan Farris (Forecast) but almost anyone in agriculture or forestry, etc. from wineries in California to corn growers in Iowa to maple sugar producers in New England can tell you this has been happening, and it's starting to have an impact. Sugar maples in New England (above right), for example, are dying and may soon be virtually extinct. The rippling effect of climate change--from northern species dying out to disease-carrying insects moving north--is just beginning. For now, some of it is pleasant, as April becomes the new May. But it's already starting to change lives and livelihoods, and a sane society would have noticed that by now.

Pillar of the Future: Fiscal Discipline

The final pillar of the future in President Obama's speech at Georgetown was restoring fiscal discipline in the federal budget. The topic of government spending and taxes inevitably comes up at tax time, pumped up this year by some big Republican lobbying firms and FOX news, owned by the biggest media company in the world, in the guise of a grassroots revolt.

Apart from very troubling matters of tone (which I'm writing about elsewhere), the tax-and-spend portion of this revolt is revoltingly incoherent and exploitive. In a month when 95% of American families are starting to receive the tax cuts that President Obama made a key part of his recovery package, Republicans ignore this inconvenient fact to complain about taxes--which their administration did nothing to lower, except for the very rich. And after eight years turning a surplus into huge deficits and debt, the Republicans complain about deficits and government spending.

To show how little sense they make requires nothing more than quoting President Obama in this speech. First of all, he talks about successful efforts to cut spending in the budget by eliminating unneeded programs and budget items. "Already, we have identified two trillion dollars in deficit-reductions over the next decade...Altogether, this budget will reduce discretionary spending for domestic programs as share of the economy by more than 10% over the next decade to the lowest level since we began keeping records nearly half a century ago. And as we continue to go through the federal budget line by line, we will be announcing additional savings, secured by eliminating and consolidating programs we don't need so that we can make room for the things we do need."

Before talking about entitlement reform he adds these common sense points:

"First, as I said earlier, the worst thing that we could do in a recession this severe is to try to cut government spending at the same time as families and businesses around the world are cutting back on their spending. So as serious as our deficit and debt problems are – and they are very serious – major efforts to deal with them have to focus on the medium and long-term budget picture.

Second, in tackling the deficit issue, we simply cannot sacrifice the long-term investments that we so desperately need to generate long-term prosperity. Just as a cash-strapped family may cut back on luxuries but will insist on spending money to get their children through college, so we as a country have to make current choices with an eye on the future. If we don't invest now in renewable energy or a skilled workforce or a more affordable health care system, this economy simply won't grow at the pace it needs to in two or five or ten years down the road. If we don't lay this new foundation, it won't be long before we are right back where we are today. And I can assure you that chronically slow growth will not help our long-term budget situation."

He then talks about the need for all parties to come together to fashion serious reforms of Medicare and Social Security, because only this will really deal with long-term federal deficits.

"But let's not kid ourselves and suggest that we can do it by trimming a few earmarks or cutting the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts," he said.

But of course, that's exactly what Republicans and these anti-tax rebels talk about. They aren't serious. They're trying to score political points. They aren't trying to solve big problems, or any problems at all, except how to win elections and serve the interests of their rich backers. They'll use anyone and anything to keep doing that. They aren't interested in governing, and they aren't interested in the well-being and the future of America.

President Obama ended his speech with his vision of the future, once these pillars and this foundation is in place: "There is no doubt that times are still tough. By no means are we out of the woods just yet. But from where we stand, for the very first time, we are beginning to see glimmers of hope.

And beyond that, way off in the distance, we can see a vision of an America's future that is far different than our troubled economic past. It's an America teeming with new industry and commerce; humming with new energy and discoveries that light the world once more. A place where anyone from anywhere with a good idea or the will to work can live the dream they've heard so much about.

It is that house upon the rock. Proud, sturdy, and unwavering in the face of the greatest storm. We will not finish it in one year or even many, but if we use this moment to lay that new foundation; if we come together and begin the hard work of rebuilding; if we persist and persevere against the disappointments and setbacks that will surely lie ahead, then I have no doubt that this house will stand and the dream of our founders will live on in our time. "

Pillar of the Future: Health Care

"The fourth pillar of the new foundation is a 21st century health care system where families, businesses, and government budgets aren't dragged down by skyrocketing insurance premiums" President Obama said in his Georgetown U. speech. "Fixing our health care system will certainly require resources, but in my budget, we've made a commitment to fully pay for reform without increasing the deficit, and we've identified specific savings that will make the health care system more efficient and reduce costs for us all."

Universal health care is necessary not just for individuals but for companies, large and small, swamped by the cost of health insurance. To help the budgets of individuals, families and businesses, health care will free money for other purposes in both the short and long terms, and therefore is a critical part of economic recovery and restructuring. But President Obama made one other point, that isn't usually noticed.

At first he seemed to be moving on from the pillar of health care to the pillar of reducing the federal deficit. But after explaining the need to deal with the long term government deficit and how his administration is attacking this problem (more on that in a post to follow), he spoke about the need to reform entitlements like Medicare and Social Security in order to forestall greater deficits, and to meet this goal, "Nothing will be more important to this goal than passing health care reform that brings down costs across the system, including in Medicare and Medicaid. Make no mistake: health care reform is entitlement reform. That's not just my opinion – that was the conclusion of a wide range of participants at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit we held at the White House in February, and that's one of the reasons why I firmly believe we need to get health care reform done this year."

Pillar of the Future: Energy

"The third pillar of this new foundation is to harness the renewable energy that can create millions of new jobs and new industries," said President Obama in his speech at Georgetown. This is crucial to our future for many reasons: to save scarce resources and reduce pollution, environmental destruction and waste; to end dependence on foreign oil and foreign wars for oil; to reduce global heating and head off a history-ending Climate Crisis. To name a few.

But at Georgetown, President Obama concentrated on American competitiveness in the world: renewable, sustainable and clean energy is the technology of today, the crucial need of the world's future, and therefore America's best opportunity to do what it has traditionally done best: invent, innovate and build new industries for customers around the world.

"We all know that the country that harnesses this energy will lead the 21st century," the President said. "Yet we have allowed other countries to outpace us on this race to the future. Well, I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders. It is time for America to lead again.

The investments we made in the Recovery Act will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years. And we are putting Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions on our energy bills and grow our economy at the same time."

Science will invent, entrepreneurs will innovate and industries will spring up not only because there is a need, but because there is demand--and for demand to grow fast enough, the price of clean energy must be competitive. It's getting there now, but President Obama wants to give it a nudge--while reducing the greenhouse gases that are causing the growing Climate Crisis.

This is a simple formula, but it is daring to propose it. But for those who say fighting greenhouse gases pollution through carbon cap-and-trade should be left to another day when the economy is fixed, President Obama says doing it now is necessary to fixing the economy, both in terms of immediate economic activity and in his overall plan to build the foundation for a strong economy for the foreseeable future. Read what he said carefully:

"But the only way to truly spark this transformation is through a gradual, market-based cap on carbon pollution, so that clean energy is the profitable kind of energy. Some have argued that we shouldn't attempt such a transition until the economy recovers, and they are right that we have to take the costs of transition into account. But we can no longer delay putting a framework for a clean energy economy in place. If businesses and entrepreneurs know today that we are closing this carbon pollution loophole, they will start investing in clean energy now. And pretty soon, we'll see more companies constructing solar panels, and workers building wind turbines, and car companies manufacturing fuel-efficient cars. Investors will put some money into a new energy technology, and a small business will open to start selling it. That's how we can grow this economy, enhance our security, and protect our planet at the same time."

Other efforts along these lines are building a smart and secure electrical grid--another area where other countries are moving ahead--and Thursday's announcement of a plan for a new, smart high-speed rail network.

Go Ask Alice

Something to ponder in view of Wednesday GOP "tea parties" and the Rabid Right in general. For Alice's adventures at one, try companion blog American Dash here.

Pillar of the Future: Education

In his Georgetown speech, President Obama's first pillar in the foundation of the future is to reform the outdated rules and regulations that allowed this crisis to happen in the first place. The fifth pillar is long-term deficit reduction, to be done not by wishful thinking or crazy proposals, but by getting together to confront the hard problems and craft solutions. But that is a task that virtually all responsible economists agree needs to wait until the government has dealt with the Great Recession we're in right now. Both of these sober and sensible approaches belie the kind of infantile analysis the Rabid Right is indulging in, as evidenced by the "tea-bag" protests on April 15.

The second pillar of the future is education. Republicans have talked a lot about education while pursuing policies that have driven it to the brink of disaster on all levels. And at all levels, the United States is falling behind.

President Obama recognizes that the American economic future depends on our citizens being smart and skilled enough to compete and innovate in a world where many countries have invested more heavily in education.

It's not only that Europe has done better. It's especially important because the U.S. is not going to out-compete on the basis of raw numbers with countries like India and China. There are more college honor students in India than there are total college students in the U.S.

Here's what President Obama said at Georgetown:

"The second pillar of this new foundation is an education system that finally prepares our workers for a 21st century economy. In the 20th century, the GI Bill sent a generation to college, and for decades, we led the world in education and economic growth. But in this new economy, we trail the world's leaders in graduation rates and achievement. That is why we have set a goal that will greatly enhance our ability to compete for the high-wage, high-tech jobs of the 21st century: by 2020, America will once more have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

To meet that goal, we have already dramatically expanded early childhood education. We are investing in innovative programs that have proven to help schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. We are creating new rewards tied to teacher performance and new pathways for advancement. I have asked every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training, and we have provided tax credits to make a college education more affordable for every American."

Outline of the Future

On Tuesday at Georgetown University, President Obama described what his administration has done to fix the economy and why--and he outlined the future and what we need to do to get there. But you wouldn't know it from the pitiful media coverage. See more in the post below.

Foundation of A Sustainable Future

President Obama warned the faculty and students at Georgetown University on Tuesday that he was there to deliver prose, not poetry. But there's more poetry in concise description in a precisely organized structure, easy to understand because it is so clear, direct and grounded in the real world.

Towards the end of the speech, he mentioned the problem of "an attention span that has only grown shorter with the twenty-four hour news cycle, and insists on instant gratification in the form of immediate results or higher poll numbers. When a crisis hits, there's all too often a lurch from shock to trance, with everyone responding to the tempest of the moment until the furor has died away and the media coverage has moved on, instead of confronting the major challenges that will shape our future in a sustained and focused way."

Well, that's another game he's not playing. In this speech he did precisely that: confronted the major challenges that will shape our future in a sustained and focused way. The media mostly ignored it, mentioning at best his assessment that the economy shows "glimmers of hope", but there are still difficult times ahead.

The first half of the speech was a step by step analysis of the current economic crisis, the steps that were taken in the last months of Bush and the steps his administration has taken and why. For anyone who is confused or doubtful about any part of it, this speech makes it pretty clear. You can read the transcript here or in PDF format at C-Span here. The CSpan video is currently here.

The second half of the speech is about the future. President Obama began by referring to a parable. "There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was destroyed as soon as the storm hit. But the second is known as the wise man, for when "…the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house…it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."

We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity – a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad."

President Obama outlined five pillars of a better future.

"It's a foundation built upon five pillars that will grow our economy and make this new century another American century: new rules for Wall Street that will reward drive and innovation; new investments in education that will make our workforce more skilled and competitive; new investments in renewable energy and technology that will create new jobs and industries; new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and new savings in our federal budget that will bring down the debt for future generations. That is the new foundation we must build. That must be our future – and my Administration's policies are designed to achieve that future."

In the coming days, I will excerpt President Obama's remarks on several of these pillars, and his vision for a better future.

Happy Easter (and the Dog We Can Believe In)

Photos from the White House Easter Egg hunt plus one of Bo, the Dog We Can Believe In. These and more in Al Rodgers' latest photo blog at Kos. Check it out.

Aloha Bo

Meet Bo, the First Dog: a present to Sasha and Malia Obama from Senator Ted Kennedy. This is the official White House portrait.

Sunday Morning

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.--from Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens
photo by Andrea Gerak, Budapest

Stop the Presses?

Newspaper editors and and a national media survey defending newspapers against the Internet incurs the wrath of Daily's Kos, and the AP attempt to get paid for links to its stories inspires Arianna's huff. It's the New Media against the Old, supposedly, though it looks a lot like the same old same old, dog eat dog, pissing contests and dominance games.

Kos is caustic and dismissive. To the assertion that “News consumption depends on news production, and I don't see anything on the Internet that produces news—that is, detailed responsible empirical journalism—the way newspapers do (or did). ” he responds: "If you're in such a bubble that you haven't seen the dozens of news operations online that are producing 'detailed responsible empirical journalism', then you are hopeless." Dozens? Really? As much as daily and weekly newspapers and magazines? Even though Josh Marshall of the TPM sites admits: "If all the big papers disappeared right now and we replaced them with 50 TPMs, it wouldn't come close to doing the job."

I left a comment on this post challenging the site to operate for a full week without using links to newspapers, but only to those other "dozens of online news operations" using only their original reporting. Then we'll see where we are exactly.

Kos titles this post "More on Newspaper Executive Arrogance," but arrogance has a different source when in an earlier post he wrote, "But as I've already argued, why should newspapers cover sports when that's already capably covered in umpteen other outlets? Do they need to pay for David Broder's column? Do they need AP wire? Do they need a style or celebrity or business sections? A theater or architecture critic? Of course not. "

Of course not, because Kos knows best. And oh, he also happens to run sports blogs.

There's no doubt a lot of arrogance among newspaper executives and the corporate execs who started newspapers on their downfall by cutting "costs" (i.e. reporters, foreign news bureaus, etc.) just to squeeze out higher profits to finance their other corporate shenanigans. Some of them whine for preferential treatment because they feel it is their due, though others are just looking for some road to survival.

But come on, people like Kos and Arianna who are aggressively growing their sites and influence are not exactly arguing from disinterested objectivity. And they are doing so without employing very many people, and as far as I know, none in union jobs.

Arianna goes on about how the old models don't work, these old guys don't understand the Internet like she does, which may both be true. But to the key question of what the new model is for paying reporters to write the stories she aggregates on her site, is never answered. Huffington Post is at best symbiotic with established media, but mostly predatory. Plus it's no great improvement. A cross between the National Inquirer and the Nation, with heavy doses of Vanity Fair, it is replete with sensationalist and all too often misleading headlines. Which usually link to somebody else's reporting. What's wrong with asking Arianna to pay for it? She sells ad space. I have to deal with those jumping and moving ad images wracking my eyes and playing havoc with my computer whenever I stop there. (Huffpost does pay a monthly fee to the AP.)

Instead Huffpost has lots of opinion columns--I'm not sure they pay for those now, but they didn't when they started. But their writers are celebs or celebrity journalists who do it to maintain visibility, to publicize themselves for their paid media jobs. These days the media is run across all platforms--print, TV, blogocracy--by a relative few people, who may report or write a column for a newspaper while taking another paycheck for opining for a particular cable network, and possibly another for political or media consulting, another for books and and of course the speaking fees, then publicizing themselves and all these activities on "new" blogs and Twitter. Or they work for a think tank or advocacy group or university or some institution that benefits from their visibility--and if they become visible enough, they can move on up to more celebrity. It's the instant, interconnected media version of celebrity journalism--pretty much the only kind of journalism we're getting, and the only kind we're going to have if newspapers fold.

The Internet sites include lots of other voices offering their opinions in comments and diaries, all for free, while driving up readership and making money and careers for a very few people, like Kos and Arianna. Nice work if you can get it.

The problem is that the real news is not gathered by celebrities. It is gathered by plodders--reporters who may lack ambition and imagination, who just want a steady job with an income to help support a family and be a member of the community they cover. But they develop and follow leads, they do the work that may offend the powerful, which often enough threatens their steady job, or it would if there weren't unions and a solid tradition of newspapers defending their reporters. You can't consume what is not produced.

There should be more reporting, better reporting. We shouldn't be amazed at what it took one reporter at the LA Times to uncover about health insurance companies in California--dozens of reporters should have found it out earlier. But we are amazed, because she did it, she spent a long time getting the story, and it may eventually mean life or death to any number of people.

As for those other features of newspapers--I've already written about Kos, a resident of Berkeley, and his apparent hostility to the San Francisco Chronicle. But I happen to value pretty highly the theatre reviews of Robert Hurwitt there, the movie reviews of Mick DeSalle, the art criticism of Kenneth Baker, as well as Jon Carroll, my favorite columnist in the world.

This debate goes off on tangents--like the reporters and columnists people don't like, or the medium they prefer (newspaper, laptop, Kindle, etc.) Those discussions are meaningful in themselves, as are the fears that in-depth reporting or writing of any length is being killed off by Internet snippets and eye candy--but this newspaper crisis is a crisis because there is no apparent way to pay people to do what reporters and newspaper writers do.

I don't know the answer. I like free access to the information on the Internet, and I don't think a lot of sites demanding payment will work. But at least I acknowledge there is a problem, and it is serious. It seems to me people like Kos and Arianna are avoiding it.

It's additionally if also ruefully funny that while both of them defend the common man against Wall Street and big corporations, they have nothing to say about union jobs at their blogs. Maybe that's too little guy mundane for the Blogocracy. Or maybe it's just another in the well-established tradition of exploiting the labor of writers and reporters.

This economy is forcing the issue faster than the problems are being confronted, let alone solved. To some degree, these newspapers may be like endangered species. Once they're gone, they're gone. Even if it was a freak storm that wiped them out. We're going to miss them--and not just sentimentally, but in missing information-- and that includes the Blogocracy.

Slickhorn Gulch on the San Juan River, Utah. Photo: uploaded to Flickr by Tim Tuttle.

Steady, They Say

Clambering up the rocks of a dry wash gully,
warped sandstone, by the San Juan River,

look north to stony mountains
shifting clouds and sun

--despair at how the human world goes down

Consult my old advisers


"steady" they say


"today"

(At Slickhorn Gulch on the San Juan River, 1999)

--by Gary Snyder, from Danger on Peaks (Shoemaker Hoard)

Earthquake in Italy

The earthquake that devastated L'Aquila is very far away from where I am, and yet it is not. Not far from L'Aquilia (80 kilometers) in the Abruzzi region of Italy is Manoppello, where my mother was born, and her parents met and lived until coming to the U.S., and where I still have relatives, although I don't know any of them. I know that some of them still live in the house where my grandmother lived. Since early news reports said that other towns and villages were affected by the quake, I tried to find information on Manoppello. I found only one article, in Italian. I'm told I was bilingual for awhile--when I knew few words in English or Italian--but I can't really understand, or certainly read Italian. Yet after staring at the article for awhile, I did begin to understand enough: though the earthquake was felt there, there were no deaths and no significant damage. That of course is not true of L'Aquila, where hundreds have died and many buildings devastated.

That I would feel connected to this distant disaster in a place where I know no one is not entirely goofy. I saw another article somewhere about efforts in the U.S. to collect money for earthquake relief by Italian Americans--someone said that it doesn't matter how weak the ties now, how distant the American life is from the Italian or the immigrant experience, the bond is still there. These connections occur in time as well as place; from another time to this.

That I live in a very earthquake-prone area now that (like L'Aquila until this week) hasn't experienced a quake in long enough time to forget the danger in daily life, has something to do with the attention I'm paying. The experience of such a disaster lasts well beyond it in time, as evidenced in an oped piece in the New York Times by Stanislao Pugliese, about a far worse quake in another Abruzzi town in 1915, in which "3,500 of the town’s 5,000 residents had perished in a matter of 30 seconds." Among the dead was the mother of Italian novelist Ignazio Silone. This immense event changed him and all his fictions, Pugliese writes, which"bear the often subtle, sometimes vivid imprint of the catastrophe."

Such a disaster changes or reinforces ideas about fate. "In a twist of fate that surprised no one, the only house left undamaged was uninhabited." In the disaster and the aftermath, much is also revealed about human beings and their institutions:

“In an earthquake,” Silone wrote decades after his experience, “everyone dies: rich and poor, learned and illiterate, authorities and the people. An earthquake accomplishes what words and laws promise and never achieve: the equality of all. But it is an ephemeral equality, for when fear had died down, collective misfortune became the opportunity for even greater injustices.”

“Only loss is universal,” he once wrote, “and true cosmopolitanism in this world must be based on suffering.”

Many of our lives are not hit so hard, though at any moment they may be. But we who have been relatively fortunate are not absolved from empathy. It is our role to understand and to act.