James Hansen Arrested at White House

He might be the world's foremost climate scientist.  NASA Goddard Space Laboratory director, Dr. James Hansen was arrested outside the White House today while protesting against the Athabasca Tar Sands and the Keystone XL pipeline.

Before he was taken into custody today, Hansen took a megaphone and implored Obama to act "for the sake of your children and grandchildren."

"If Obama chooses the dirty needle it will confirm that the president was just green-washing all along," Hansen, 70, who took a vacation day from his job at the New York based institute to participate in the protest, said in an e-mailed statement.

PBS aired a tar sands/pipeline debate between environmentalist Bill McKibben and Robert Bryce, senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute.   McKibben organized the protests at which Hansen was arrested.  Bryce made the case in favour of the Tar Sands in a very direct fashion.

McKibben:

this tar sands in Alberta is a big deal. It's the second largest pool of carbon on Earth, after the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Jim Hansen of NASA, who was arrested today, really the world's foremost climate scientist, said -- as he was speaking this morning, said, if we go ahead and begin tapping these unconventional energy sources, of which the tar sands are the biggest example, it is -- and here I quote - "essentially game over for the climate."
 
Since, for once, Obama can stop a project without having Congress in the way, this has become the focal point. And these arrests have -- actually now over 500 people. The numbers are just growing and growing day after day.

Bryce:

I appreciate Bill McKibben passion on the issue. I understand his position. But my position is very simple. I'm for cheap, abundant, reliable energy, particularly now in the U.S., when we have over 45 million Americans on food stamps, we have more than nine million unemployed. The actually unemployed or underemployed is probably twice that number. 

We need cheap, abundant, reliable energy. And this project will in particular provide abundant and reliable energy. The tar -- the oil sands in Canada have over 100 billion barrels of oil in them. And we need it no, given -- particularly because we want North American energy production. 

Of course what Bryce leaves out is "cheap for whom?"   Cheap for the end users, the American consumer, but devastatingly costly for the masses, mainly in the Third World, enduring the scourge of climate change.   Bryce and those who think like him put a price on those lives ruined and lost - and it's "cheap."

A World Without Food Security

This map, published in today's  Guardian, is an eye opener.   It charts how much of the world faces food insecurity.   That, by the way, is all of the world except those countries coloured green.

Get the picture?   North America (excluding Mexico), Western Europe (excluding Spain), Iceland, Japan, Australia and New Zealand - that's the lot.   This is the Maplecroft Food Security Risk Index, 2011.  This is a world of 7-billion people, racing toward 9-billion even as the ravages of climate change close in on it.

Look at the hardest hit countries - Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Somalia, Sudan,  North Korea, Yemen, India, Pakistan, Burma.   These are countries either in conflict or hovering on the brink of conflict.

But wait, there's more.   Who are the biggest carbon emitters?  China and the United States, of course.  And where is public concern over global warming falling markedly?   You guessed it, China and the United States.   Less than half of Americans say they're concerned about global warming which is no small comfort to the Big Carbon lobby and their bought and paid for minions, the US Congress.  And, in China, which itself faces food insecurity, concern has dropped from 77% in 2009 to 64% today.

With the United States utterly hostile to any effective global emissions control agreement and China nearing indifference, we're simply screwed.  That means us too, all the greenies in that map above.  We'll probably be the last and least impacted, barring all out war (which is a very real possibility), but we'll still be hit eventually.

What else can we expect from political leaders who, in Jared Diamond's words, "consider leaving environmental problems unsolved a money-saving device."

In his fascinating book, Collapse, Diamond wrote "...some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own interests by behavior harmful to other people. Scientists terms such behavior "rational" precisely because it employs correct reasoning, even though it may be morally reprehensible. The perpetrators know they will often get away with their bad behavior, especially if there is no law against it or if the law isn't effectively enforced. They feel safe because the perpetrators are typically concentrated (few in number) and highly motivated by the prospect of reaping big, certain, and immediate profits, while the losses are spread over large numbers of individuals."

That passage pretty much explains the Athabasca Tar Sands in a nutshell.   Our supposed leaders treat ignoring the environmental problems as a money-saving device.

The Japanese Live Longest. Why?

A girl born in Japan today can expect to live to age 86.  Japanese life expectancy has increased 30-years since 1947.   A series of papers in the British medical journal, The Lancet, finds the Japanese success has  cultural, social and political roots.

The remarkable improvement in Japanese health began with the rapid economic growth of the late 1950s and 1960s. The government invested heavily in public health, introducing universal health insurance in 1961, free treatment for tuberculosis and cutting childhood deaths through vaccination and treatment of intestinal and respiratory infections.

Following the control of infectious diseases, Japan tackled its high death rate from stroke with salt reduction campaigns and the use of drugs to control blood pressure.
But beyond the government's initiatives, there are attitudes and cultural practices among the people of Japan that have also helped, says the article by Professor Kenji Shibuya, of the department of global health policy at the University of Tokyo, and colleagues.

"First, Japanese people give attention to hygiene in all aspects of their daily life," they write. "This attitude might partly be attributable to a complex interaction of culture, education, climate [eg humidity, temperature], environment [eg having plenty of water and being a rice-eating nation] and the old Shinto tradition of purifying the body and mind before meeting others."

"Second, they are health conscious. In Japan, regular check-ups are the norm. Mass screening is provided for everyone at school and work or in the community by local government authorities. A systematic check-up of the whole body, referred to as a human dry dock, is another type of health screening, which is popular amiong business people - they stay at clinics or hospitals for several days to undergo thorough physical examinations.

"Third, Japanese food has a balanced nutritional benefit and the diet of the Japanese population has improved in tandem with economic development over the past five decades."

Another aspect of Japan that contributes to the cohesiveness and prosperity of their society is income equality.  Japan has the narrowest gap between rich and poor in the industrialized world.

Merger? Why?

If the future of the Liberal Party was to be the party that it was under its last two leaders then maybe it would be time to throw in the towel and pack it in.   The right and part of the centre wing of the Libs could gravitate to Harper.   The left and some of the centre might more or less willingly sign on to the new NDP ship of state.  A number of Libs might just wish a pox on both their houses and withdraw from politics or go Green.

But the rationale I most often hear for merger assumes that one election, the last, foretells the future and that's just silly.   Weak Liberal leadership, strong NDP leadership and wiley and deftly manipulative Conservative leadership all played a big role in the last election outcome.   As far as the Libs were concerned, the vote was a referendum on a leader and leadership that's now safely gone.   Is there a Lib who thinks his or her party gave it their all, gave Canadians their best in that election?   If so, please join the merger line.

Something else that hasn't been resolved is just what the LPC would merge with?   This comes down to the heart and soul of the New Democrats - socialism.   Jack Layton, to his credit, very skilfully smothered the issue of whether the NDP, in opposition and with hopes to form a government, would expunge the party's historic commitment to socialism.    Mr. Layton knew that was a powerfully divisive threat if he let it come to the fore.   But, even if New Democrats are willing to let that sleeping dog lie, Liberals tossing about the idea of merger need to know the answer before they go ahead.  Will they be merging into a party that's avowedly socialist?

If the Liberal Democratic Party is to be openly socialist that is going to weigh heavily on the numbers of Liberals, centre-right Libs who will be interested in signing on.   A number of them will migrate, even if begrudgingly, to the Conservatives.   That will greatly weaken the Libs bargaining position in merger talks.   Look what happened to the Progressive Conservatives when they stepped into Harper's lion's den.

If the Liberal Democrats are not to be socialist but choose the path of centrism instead then there are going to be plenty of NDP faithful who won't want any part of it.   After all, some of them have spent generations denouncing the Liberal Party.   Why would they want their own party to take on that mantle?  What about everything they've so proudly stood for all these generations?

As a centre-left Liberal, I should be the least troubled by the idea of merger but it still concerns me deeply.  What's the rush?   If there is to be a merger, it's going to take time and effort and a lot of compromise if we're to get it right.   We can't risk getting it wrong.   That goes for both sides.  We have to measure our compatibility, our commonality of interests and in that identify our differences and weigh each side's ability to overcome them.  Who gives?  What?  How much?

We still need to consult the public and the best way to discern their opinion is at the polls.  We need another election, probably two, before we can safely gauge public support for a merged party.  The whole idea could backfire with the electorate.

I have always associated the New Democratic Party as a party of lofty ideals and fiercely held principles.  I have always valued the immeasurable role the NDP has played as the conscience of Parliament.   But if the NDP want to pursue the path to Sussex Drive, they'll have to embrace pragmatism and compromise.   Their future progressivism will have to be sharply muted from what it was in the past.

If the NDP believes it can campaign its way into government on a socialist platform then it should reject the Liberals.  They'll only drag you down.   If, however, the NDP believes it should become a latter day centre-left liberal movement, then it should come to that decision openly and democratically.  Its lifelong, dedicated members deserve nothing less.

No, merger initiatives at this point smack of desperation and are riddled with potential pitfalls.  The NDP needs to consolidate its organization in the wake of Mr. Layton's horribly untimely death.  The Libs need to rehabilitate their own tattered organization.   Neither side is currently ready for merger.

Is It Just Me? Do You Think Lloyd Robertson Was a Great Journalist?

At long last Lloyd Robertson is stepping down, resigning as anchor of CTV national news.  I'll bet Lloyd can't find anyone still in the business who was there when he got in back in the early 50's.   Pretty much anybody and everybody he looked up to has long settled in for the eternal dirt nap.

Lloyd is a fixture, I'll give him that.   Then again, so is a lamp post but you won't find too many lamp posts still around from the early 50's.

But was there any real greatness to Lloyd Robertson or is he just an old fart with a faithful following?  I can't think of any great journalistic moment that characterizes Lloyd.   I remember during the Montreal Olympics when some Russian ox set a world record for the clean and jerk in weightlifting whereupon Lloyd opined, "Gee, that looks heavy."  Really, Lloyd?  Really?  It "looks heavy"?

I was disappointed so many years ago when Lloyd didn't step down as expected to make way for Keith Morrison.  Of course I wasn't quite so disappointed as Keith must have been before he made his way to the TV studios of California and spent much too much time in the sun.  Keith, however, was a journalist and did some good work in his day which concluded before he got into hawking lurid tales of sensational murders.

I grew up in the era of Cronkite, Chancellor, Huntley, Brinkley, Howard K. Smith and Eric Sevareid, and later, Dan Rather, Robert McNeil & Jim Lehrer, Peter Jennings, and Bob Schieffer - all Robertson's contemporaries.  If he's to be measured by anybody it's those guys.  They set the bar and, when you look at it that way, Lloyd Robertson was pretty damned mediocre.

U Vic's Gift to the World

The University of Victoria in conjunction with the British Columbia government is releasing online a 4-part course on climate change.   The programmes cut through the scientific jargon and present the facts in layman's language.   The course was created for the BC public service and educators but is also available free to the public.


You can access it here.   The course was created by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions which is hosted by U Vic in collaboration with UBC, Simon Fraser and the University of Northern British Columbia.   The first module was unveiled Monday by BC EnviroMin Terry Lake at the Institute of Public Administration of Canada annual conference.

PICS director, Tom Pedersen, hopes the videos will go viral.

"I hope the public and policy-makers will understand when they are being duped by those segments of society that would rather we do nothing about acting on climate change," he said.
"Some sectors, driven by particular political ideologies, seem to think [that] if we continue to pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, everything will be fine. Everything will not be fine."

 No word yet on when Harper and his caucus will schedule their own private screening of the programmes.  Maybe they can just watch these, the stuff prepared for grade school kids:

Or, if you like, you can check out Lecture 1 here.   Warning, long pants  required to view this.

Michelle Bachmann - Hurricane Irene Was a Message from God

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”
                                                                                   - Michelle Bachmann

It's hard to know if there's an imbecility limit for Republican presidential nomination candidates but Michelle Bachmann shows us no one has reached the bottom yet.   Apparently this outburst was even too much for Bachmann's handlers who brushed it off, saying the Congresswoman was speaking in jest.  Yeah, no.

Meanwhile Bachmann rival and current Republican frontrunner, Rick Perry, is flopping about like a freshly landed lake trout.

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry has a record of intense opposition to Social Security. The Texas governor has not only dismissed the bedrock program as a “Ponzi scheme,” he even wrote in his book that Social Security is unconstitutional. Given the program’s popularity, this would appear to be a political problem for the apparent GOP frontrunner.

Indeed, two weeks ago, asked about his antipathy towards Social Security, Perry stuffed food in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to answer the question. Around the same time, Perry’s campaign said the candidate no longer stands behind the book he published just nine months ago.

Help me out here.   When did "absurd" become a job prerequisite for Republican candidates?  This is how Richard Dawkins has it figured:

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Has Libya Already Fallen to al-Qaeda?

According to Asia Times, the Libyan rebel commander now in charge in Tripoli and his colleagues elsewhere throughout the country are al-Qaeda assets.

His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him.

Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter - once again - that wilderness of mirrors that is the "war on terror", as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "humanitarian" intervention in Libya. 


...Abdelhakim Belhaj, aka Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, is a Libyan jihadi. Born in May 1966, he honed his skills with the mujahideen in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

...After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - all this before al-Qaeda in Iraq pledged its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and turbo-charged its gruesome practices.

In Iraq, Libyans happened to be the largest foreign Sunni jihadi contingent, only losing to the Saudis. Moreover, Libyan jihadis have always been superstars in the top echelons of "historic" al-Qaeda.

 In 2003, Belhaj was finally arrested in Malaysia - and then transferred, extraordinary rendition-style, to a secret Bangkok prison, and duly tortured.

In 2004, the Americans decided to send him as a gift to Libyan intelligence - until he was freed by the Gaddafi regime in March 2010, along with other 211 "terrorists", in a public relations coup advertised with great fanfare.

The orchestrator was no less than Saif Islam al-Gaddafi - the modernizing/London School of Economics face of the regime. 

...The late July killing of rebel military commander General Abdel Fattah Younis - by the rebels themselves - seems to point to Belhaj or at least people very close to him.

It's essential to know that Younis - before he defected from the regime - had been in charge of Libya's special forces fiercely fighting the LIFG in Cyrenaica from 1990 to 1995.
 Hardly by accident, all the top military rebel commanders are LIFG, from Belhaj in Tripoli to one Ismael as-Salabi in Benghazi and one Abdelhakim al-Assadi in Derna, not to mention a key asset.

...It doesn't require a crystal ball to picture the consequences of LIFG/AQIM - having conquered military power and being among the war "winners" - not remotely interested in relinquishing control just to please NATO's whims.


Back in February, a month before our NATO blunder, this blog urged that America get the Egyptian military to enter Libya and put a quick end to the Gaddafi regime.   The reasoning was that a protracted campaign could allow al-Qaeda to get the toe hold it had failed to achieve during the Egyptian uprising.   By July it was apparent that our worst fears had come true.

Time was very much of the essence in this one.  In neighbouring Egypt, Mubarak had only recently been toppled but the face of the government that would ultimately succeed him was undetermined.  al Qaeda and other Islamist groups lurked in the wings and openly proclaimed they were waiting for the right moment to make their move.    They were looking for a window of chaos.

The Libyan uprising was just what the Islamist planners so badly wanted.  It would be much easier to establish their presence within Libya, on Egypt's border, than within Egypt itself if only the Libyan chaos would drag out.

...Our Western leaders dawdled.  Eventually they fell back on their demonstrated political and military incompetence and decided an air war would do the trick.  And so they have brought to Libya the very same result they achieved so spectacularly in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Fools - the lot of them.

Now it isn't just Libya that's at risk from Islamist extremists.  It's Egypt itself where the country remains in a state of chaos and unrest.   And what lies immediately beyond Egypt?

Is This Harper's Plan for Athabasca?

The Australian government is moving to protect steelworkers' jobs against the impacts of its own carbon pricing regime at a cost of $36,000 per year per worker.

In a report to be released today, the institute finds the steel industry - under pressure from the high Australian dollar - will make a windfall per tonne of steel from carbon tax compensation over the first four years of the scheme.

The institute also finds the government's commitment of a large swathe of free permits, and a $300 million adjustment fund for steel under the carbon price, will cost it over $320,000 per worker from 2012 to 2020, or on average $36,000 a year.

 

So the idea seems to be that you levy carbon taxes on the major carbon emitters and then refund the tax as job-saving "compensation."   That sounds like the perfect deal for Big Oil in Athabasca. 

Kapitalism = Capitalism - Regulation

Karl Marx had a theory of capitalism that few of us have managed to understand and fewer still accept.  We wrote him off as a communist agitator, an enemy of democracy and our economic model.   In that, we failed to heed his warnings, dire predictions that have now arrived at our feet.

What we're learning the hard way is that capitalism works best for us when it's subordinate to the state, that is to say it's regulated.   Today the evidence is inescapable that capitalism without regulation becomes the Kapitalism that Marx foresaw.

Ronald Reagan and his followers like Brian Mulroney ushered in an era of deregulation that achieved a near-religious stature.   Republicans to this day, whackos like Rick Perry, still worship at the altar of deregulation despite all the damage that has caused their country and their people.

A word about deregulation.   When you see a politician preaching deregulation you should immediately look for the "for sale" sign tattooed on his forehead.   A politician in a mood to deregulate is generally a politician with something to sell.   What he's selling, in many cases, is the public interest but, of all the forms of political larceny, deregulation is, hands down, the safest.   Sell government assets out the back door and you can go to jail.   Get caught fixing a contract and you may be headed for the Greybar Hotel.   Push through deregulation and you're merely freeing up the economy.  That's why there are six registered lobbyists for every member of the House and Senate - to buy subsidies, tax favouritism, and deregulation for the rich and powerful.   Now, in fairness, not all deregulation is corrupt but a lot more of it is than we often recognize.

But let's get back to Uncle Karl. Writing in today's Sydney Morning Herald, the senior economic advisor at UBS, George Magnus, suggests Marx saw this coming in deregulated capitalism:

As he wrote in Das Kapital, companies' pursuit of profits and productivity would naturally lead them to need fewer and fewer workers, creating an "industrial reserve army" of the poor and unemployed: "Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery."

The process he describes is visible throughout the developed world, particularly in the US companies' efforts to cut costs and avoid hiring have boosted US corporate profits as a share of total economic output to the highest level in more than six decades, while the unemployment rate stands at 9.1 per cent and real wages are stagnant.

US income inequality, meanwhile, is by some measures close to its highest level since the 1920s. Before 2008, the income disparity was obscured by factors such as easy credit, which allowed poor households to enjoy a more affluent lifestyle. Now the problem is coming home to roost.

Marx also pointed out the paradox of over-production and under-consumption: The more people are relegated to poverty, the less they will be able to consume all the goods and services companies produce. When one company cuts costs to boost earnings, it's smart, but when they all do, they undermine the income formation and effective demand on which they rely for revenues and profits.

This problem, too, is evident in today's developed world. We have a substantial capacity to produce, but in the middle- and lower-income cohorts, we find widespread financial insecurity and low consumption rates.

The result is visible in the US, where new housing construction and automobile sales remain about 75 per cent and 30 per cent below their 2006 peaks, respectively.

As Marx put it in Kapital: "The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses."

So what is the answer?  We could begin by acquiring an adult view of government regulation.  Blindly accepting that regulation is inherently bad is good for someone, just not you or me.   The Crown Prince of deregulation is globalism, free trade.   Governments surrendered state sovereignty to corporatism, their sovereign right to impose tariffs and trade restrictions to benefit domestic economic and political interests.   It leads to massive job outsourcing and income inequality.  Go back to what Magnus wrote:

"When one company cuts costs to boost earnings, it's smart, but when they all do, they undermine the income formation and effective demand on which they rely for revenues and profits."  Nike may like to make those trainers in Vietnam with $3 a day labour but they depend on other companies at home paying their employees $25 an hour so they can afford to buy those shoes.

We need to realize that Marx was right when he wrote that capitalism can self-destruct and, left to its own devices, probably will.   That is what's happening today.   Capitalism doesn't operate as an organized, self-regulating force.   In practice it looks much more like "for profit" anarchy.  If it is going to benefit our societies instead of undermining them, we have to tell it how it is going to behave.  Like an unruly child, it needs boundaries, limits.

Most of all we need a new generation of leaders, a generation whose future financial wellbeing hasn't already been assured.   We need a fresh crop of leaders with vision who can explain these lethal paradoxes to the public and rally support for reform.  Above all else, we need to rid our country of those who would prefer to rule not lead, those who have no vision of the challenges that lie ahead.

We have to recognize the social dimension to healthy capitalism because that is what generates stable, robust societies.   Economic income has to be fairly apportioned between capital and labour to bolster "income formation and effective demand on which companies rely for revenues and profits."   That's not programmed into the system that is the true legacy of Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney.   They left that out entirely and that was very much by design.

The Funniest Ad I've Seen in a Long Time

I was in London Drugs a couple of weeks back and on the shelves I spotted a new product, "Fresh Balls."

Here's their ad, courtesy of YouTube:

And If You Had Any Doubt the Radical Right Is Stark Raving Mad

House Republicans maintain that NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a huge waste of money.   In fact it's such a huge waste of money they're planning to force through cuts that would trim NOAA's budget by 30%.

The agency is warning the cuts will leave it effectively blind and will destroy its ability to give 5-10 days advance information of approaching hurricanes.

The $1.2bn (£730m) of cuts will force NOAA to delay replacing ageing satellites – meaning that it could go for up to 18 months without an eye in the sky at some time in the next five years.

"Whether the gap is longer than that depends on whether we get the money in the next budget," Jane Lubchenco, the head of NOAA, told an audience in Denver earlier this month.

For a country that still hasn't recovered from hurricane Katrina and has just been blasted by hurricane Irene, blinding the one agency that furnishes advance warning of major storm events is utter madness.  This from a government that is still spending about $10 billion a month to wage a senseless, decadal war in Afghanistan.


Madness, Republican style.

The Ugly Face of the Corporatist State

A big h/t to Carey over at Finding Clarity for posting this Carlin sketch.   And they called Carlin a "comedian."  I'm reposting the clip because it needs to be disseminated as broadly as possible.

What We Need Now - Another Square Deal

Nothing would please me more than the implementation of an entirely conservative policy platform.   The conservative was US President Theodore Roosevelt.   The policy platform was Roosevelt's "Square Deal."

Roosevelt's policy focused on environmental conservation, reining in corporate excesses and basic consumer protection.  Bear in mind that what follows was said in 1910, a long century ago:

...the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said:


"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."

And again:

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

...In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. 

At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. 

...our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest is entitled to justice-full, fair, and complete-and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.

The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs. 

...The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration.

The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. 


No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered-not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective-a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown to the other nations, which approach us in financial strength. There is no reason why we should suffer what they escape. It is of profound importance that our financial system should be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly and effectively revised as to make it certain that hereafter our currency will no longer fail at critical times to meet our needs. 

...Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation. 

...Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part. 

Nothing is more true than that excess of every kind is followed by reaction; a fact which should be pondered by reformer and reactionary alike. We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it. 

...One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests.

...In the last analysis, the most important elements in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character-character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, and a good husband-that makes a man a good neighbor. You must have that, and, then, in addition, you must have the kind of law and the kind of administration of the law which will give to those qualities in the private citizen the best possible chance for development. The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive. 

Every few years I like to return to Roosevelt's 1910 speech to recalibrate my political compass.  He speaks of a great political morality that has been abjectly trampled upon through the rise of corporatism over the past thirty or forty years.


Roosevelt warned his countrymen back then that direct or indirect corporate funding leads directly to the corruption of government.  That's a lesson every Canadian needs to grasp as our own country descends into Petro-statehood.

Teddy Roosevelt makes the point that progressivism is more than quaint notions.   It is a fundamental requirement of any sound society.  "Public men must be genuinely progressive."  In those words you'll find the perversion of anything remotely conservative in today's Conservative Party of Canada.  Harper has taken his radical movement so far beyond the political philosophies pronounced by Burke, Lincoln and Roosevelt that they would not consider it conservative.   It was Harper who demanded that "progressive" be expunged from the name of his party and from its twisted soul.

I am more deeply troubled when the question becomes whether the Liberal Party has itself drifted far to the right of Roosevelt's progressivism.  I believe it has.   That it was willing to annoint as its leader a man with the views of Michael Ignatieff cannot be overlooked.   The Liberal Party wonders how it came to fall from Sussex Drive to Stornoway to Motel 6 yet that ugly road was paved by its rejection of progressivism.

More than anyone else, the movers and shakers within the Liberal Party need to digest Roosevelt's speech and stop treating progressivism as a weakness or, worse, some disease no longer relevant in the 21st century.   Our country has fallen into the throes of corporatism - there's the disease that plagues our people.  We're lucky in that it's not yet terminal as it has become within our neighbour and major trading partner.   We can - and must - bring it to heel - through reining in corporate power, putting corporations into service of the public, strong environmental regulation and, above all else, sharply reversing the wealth gap between rich and poor.  We need a Square Deal.

About British Columbians' Supposed Tax Revolt

There has been a lot of uninformed opinion by people in distant parts of Canada about the meaning and significance of the referendum in which a majority voted to repeal British Columbia's harmonized sales tax.   Usually these critics take the HST in isolation, as a stand-alone issue.  In that lies their profound ignorance.

The HST was merely the straw that broke the camel's back and nothing more.   It was a referendum that was as much about the government of the day as it was the tax itself.   There is a lot of anger toward our corporatist provincial government, probably the second-most corporatist provincial government in Canada.  To make any sense of the HST vote you would have to grasp the public anger over this government's handling of BC Ferries, BC Hydro, BC Rail, its unaccountability and secrecy on everything from gas fracking to the Tar Sands pipeline and supertanker port.  Stephen Harper would be quite at home with a government of the style of British Columbia's.

Remember that Gordon Campbell had to resign over his botched HST coup.  He was driven from office by his own party long before the voters had a chance to toss him out.   The premier's party ditched Campbell out of sheer self-preservation.

Now some may deride British Columbians as "hippy dippy" for trying to dodge a viable sales tax but that's an opinion mired in abject ignorance.   There's an air of civil disobedience building in British Columbia, a discontent that the provincial NDP has, so far, failed to engage.  The HST referendum did very little to vent that discontent.

BC HST Dead as a Doornail

The people of British Columbia have spoken.   The Harmonized Sales Tax initiative sprung on them in a totally underhanded manner by Stephen Harper's new ambassador to Britain has gone down in flames on a public referendum vote.   It was defeated on a 55-45 split.

Disgraced premier Campbell's stand-in, Christie Clark, claims to have a Plan B option in the wings to deal with the HST rejection but she's yet to disclose it.   Given that it could cement her fate at the polls in the next election she'll have to tread very carefully.

US State Department Declares Keystone Pipeline Low Risk

TransCanada Corp's proposed Keystone XL pipeline to move Athabasca Tar Sands bitumen to Gulf Coast refiners cleared a big hurdle today.   The US State Department reported the venture poses "no significant impacts to most resources" so long as the operator complies with US laws and follows recommended safeguards.

The State Department’s report failed to back up its conclusions, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, international program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York, said in an interview.


“When you read through the executive summary, they are noting a lot of real potential problems,” Casey-Lefkowitz said. “For them to do that and then conclude there no significant impact minimizes the very legitimate concerns of people who depend on the Ogallala aquifer and the 1,000 rivers that this pipeline would cross.”

The 1,700 mile pipeline could deliver up to 700,000 barrels of toxic, corrosive bitumen sludge a day to refineries in Texas and Oklahoma.   The Gulf Coast refineries are facing declining production from Venezuela and Mexico even as their capacity is expected to rise by 500,000 barrels a day by 2020.

F-35 Grounded, Again

The Pentagon has just announced it is again grounding the F-35 fleet, the third time this year.

The 20 operational test and training aircraft were ordered parked Wednesday until engineers and technicians can find why a power system that starts and cools the aircraft failed during an engine ground test Tuesday at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Suspending flights "is the prudent action to take at this time until the F-35 engineering, technical and system safety teams fully understand the cause of the incident," the F-35 Joint Program Office said in a statement. The program office oversees contractors and military test teams.

 

What Adam Smith Didn't Know. The "Invisible Hand" of the Market is Holding a Knife to Our Throats.

We weren't supposed to have to worry about such things.   The "market" was supposed to be self-regulating, self-correcting.   Adam Smith told us as much and, after all, he was a Scot.

But the free market capitalism that Smith foresaw was an illusion, a theory that worked moderately well for a good long while - until it didn't.   Now some, such as noted economist Nouriel Roubini, ponder whether Marx wasn't right when he described capitalism as inherently self-destructive.  The Guardian warns that the modern perversion of capitalism is ready to blow.  Nobel laureates Krugman and Stiglitz have been warning us for so long they're getting warned out.   Robert Reich implores us to recognize, in time, that wealth inequality of itself will doom our consumer economy with the rich taking the greatest losses but the poor suffering the greatest misery.

Now it's Paul Woolley speaking out.   The expert in market dysfunctionality who founded a research institute into the subject at the London School of Economics, tells Der Spiegel that today's markets are spinning out of control.

The developments in recent weeks have made it quite clear that the markets don't function properly. Things are spinning out of control and are potentially dangerous for society. Only a fraternity of academic high priests connected to the finance markets is still speaking of efficient markets. Still each market participant is pursuing their own selfish interests. The market isn't reaching equilibrium -- it's falling into chaos.

...The finance sector can -- and is -- growing until it overwhelms the economy. In good years the US finance industry cashes in on more than 40 percent of all corporate profits. In bad years they are saved by the taxpayers. The agents are doing a devilishly good job of developing innovative, complicated new products that people can't understand. It gives them the opportunity to earn excess returns and attract the best talent. While they are acting rationally, the result is a catastrophe.

Woolley's focus is on reforming the markets.  He doesn't believe governments still have the ability to regulate market stability.  His view is that it is up to the truly big investors to compel fund managers and bankers to mend their devious and avaricious ways.  Yet, while Woolley's proposals could, if enacted, restore some commercial stability to world markets, they would no nothing to answer the greatest threat, the social challenge.

Of Course It's a Hoax - A 35-Billion Dollar and Counting Hoax

Memo to Congress.   The U.S. has tied its previous record for weather/climate-related losses.  That's the bad news.   The worse news is that it's only August and you've got three more months of hurricane season still to come.

"I don't think it takes a wizard to predict 2011 is likely to go down as one of the more extreme years for weather in history," National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes told journalists on a conference call.

The agency's parent organization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, launched a campaign on Wednesday to better prepare Americans for violent weather.

There have so far been nine separate disasters this year that caused an economic loss of $1 billion or more in the United States, tying the record set in 2008, NOAA said. The most recent was the summer flooding along the Missouri and Souris rivers in the upper Midwest.

The "new reality" is that both the frequency and the cost of extreme weather are rising, making the nation more economically vulnerable and putting more lives and livelihoods at risk, Hayes said.
The number of U.S. natural disasters has tripled in the last 20 years and 2010 was a record breaker with about 250, according to property and casualty reinsurer Munich Reinsurance America.

Average thunderstorm losses have increased five-fold since 1980. For the first half of 2011 there have been $20 billion in thunderstorm losses, up from the previous three-year average of $10 billion, NOAA said.

But American attitudes and perceptions are stubbornly slow to change.   With Hurricane Irene barreling toward North Carolina, governors are still calling it a "once in a hundred year event."  Really?  How many times does a once in a hundred year event have to occur in short succession to no longer be a once in a hundred year event?