Greening the Rust Belt

Greening the Rust Belt

In general the news coming out of the industrial cities of the Midwest is fairly grim these days: we have the houses selling for less than $1,000 in Cleveland and Detroit, gas prices are taking a huge toll on the auto industry, and consumer spending, the engine of economic prosperity, has taken a nose dive.

Yet there are signs of hope in the Midwestern rust belt, as many cities and small towns look towards alternative energy sources as a way to save money during the current economic downturn and also find new sources of economic development. For example, in a rural school district in the “thumb” area of Michigan with lots of wind, the Lakers School district has received biodiesel grants, energy smart incentives and most recently, a biomass grant. Three years ago the junior high principal received more than a quarter million dollars from the Michigan Public Service Commission to purchase wind turbines that now provide almost all the power for the elementary school and the superintendent's home.

This spring Lakers junior high school students will press oil from soybeans and sunflowers for bio-diesel and learn how to use the anaerobic processor, which breaks down biodegradable waste into methane that can be used for power. Many see this exposure to “green” technology as a way of giving a new generation important job skills and of stopping the “brain drain” of the young who continue to move out of states like Michigan in search of better economic opportunities, (Amy http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89369909)

As the federal government has failed to provide incentives for energy conservation, Midwestern cities and local communities are taking the initiative themselves to cut their energy use and reduce their contribution to greenhouse gases. Ann Arbor, Michigan, is replacing the bulbs in its street lamps with light-emitting diodes (LED's) to reduce its energy usage. In Chicago, 15 million square feet of rooftops are being overhauled and landscaped with gardens that can keep reduce temperatures by as much as 70 degrees. The first garden which was planted on top of City Hall cut the building's power bill by more than 10% in the first year. (See Jim Carlton's article, “Nine Cities, Nine Ideas, The Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2008 – http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120248655589254033-o_E8MSu_lUbSRP8Bp8Y_xHWoPVg_20090210.html?mod=rss_free).

These local initiatives represent more than just a way for cash-strapped cities and municipalities to save money.

Across the US more than 700 mayors have signed an agreement to follow the goals of the Kyoto Protocols, and their cumulative efforts are fueling grassroots demands that Congress and the Bush Administration get serious about reducing energy consumption and our national dependence on foreign oil.

Last November, governors of Western and Midwestern states followed suit by signing agreements to reduce carbon emissions and to create cap-and-trade systems to meet their targets.

Earlier this month attorneys general from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia, plus representatives of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the cities of New York and Baltimore, and several environmental organizations filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency to force it to follow last year's Supreme Court ruling that that agency must decide whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, from motor vehicles, “States Sue EPA Over Global Warming,” AP, April 2, 2008. See http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iqGMrzmNKuHg8Hmz_YBFYQvY4J4AD8VPQO080.

So if you're feeling a little helpless on Earth Day as the headlines tell us the economy is tanking, gas prices are sky-rocketing, and many feel anxiety about the future of the US economy, it's reassuring to see what can happen on the local level, not just to reduce our energy consumption but to develop new technologies and new “green” industries that generate jobs at home.

Torture – Asking the Right Questions

Torture – Asking the Right Questions

Despite the evidence that our military and CIA interrogators have used torture against prisoners held in Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the American public seems to have put aside concerns about what these practices are doing to our reputation abroad and to our own sense of ourselves as a people who uphold the rule of law, including the Geneva Conventions.

Instead, we have a President who sees himself as the “Decider” and who believes his role as Commander-in-Chief gives him carte blanche to ignore the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution so long as he feels his actions are intended to “fight terrorism” and “to protect the American people.” Given that the moral debate over torture has reached this impasse, we should consider the whole question of torture from a different angle. Instead debating the immorality of using torture, what the American public and the American media should be asking is a simpler question: Does torture work?

Let us for the moment grant the Bush Administration the premise that it might need to use torture under some hypothetical circumstances. What logically follows is a series of questions: What kind of information can be extracted under these circumstances? To what degree is it credible information? And given that our practice of torture renders our own soldiers vulnerable to the same techniques if they are captured on the battlefield, and that it gravely damages our reputation in the world, is torture really worth it?

Sadly, because of the history of torture practices around the world for many centuries, we already know the answers to some of these questions. People under torture will say anything, anything, and especially anything they think their torturers want to hear.

As Ron Suskind notes in his book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” when the United States tortured Abu Zubaydah, an alleged key conspirator of Osama bin Laden, the CIA quickly discovered that their suspect suffered from a host of mental problems and was probably schizophrenic. This unbalanced man under torture began to suggest that everything was a terrorist target, sending our defenses towards the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, and a number of large malls, in an enormous and ultimately futile expenditure of millions of tax-payer dollars to protect American landmarks that were never targets at all.

The only useful information Abu Zubaydah provided was the identity of the 9-11 central plotter, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who has himself has alleged that he was tortured in secret CIA prisons and has made so many extravagant claims in his Guantanamo Bay confession that many question his veracity as well.

For example, Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 and currently a professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University, maintains that Mohammed is a still “a very big fish,” even as he acknowledges that it is “extremely unlikely [he was] involved in all of the more than 30 plots listed” in a Pentagon transcript of his confession (“Sifting Through Mohammed's Confession to Plots,” All Things Considered, March 15, 2007.

Evidence of the damage to the United States' international reputation is unequivocal. Repressive governments like of Russia and China use the alleged threat of “terrorism” to justify the often brutal tactics the take against their own citizens.

Worse, resentment against US policies in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, especially the occupation of Iraq makes ordinary citizens less willing to help, even in the legitimate quest to fight terrorism.

Dr. Steven Krull testified before the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight on May 17, 2007 and noted that “Muslims share the worldwide view that the US does not live up to its own ideals of international law and democracy.” But anti-American feeling has also intensified in recent years. Dr. Krull pointed out that eight in ten people in the four Islamic countries he studied believe that the United States is intentionally seeking “to weaken and divide the Islamic world.” Because many Muslims see the United States such a great threat, they have begun “to suppress their moral doubts about al Qaeda.” The practical effect of this has “widespread support for attacks on US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, (http://www.publicdiplomacy.org/81.htm).

The United States is already perceived as a kind of “warlord” power in the Middle East, arrogant, hypocritical, and power hungry. Add to this perception, the reports and images of torture used against Muslims that have been disseminated through the news media in the Middle East, and you have a situation where US soldiers are rendered vulnerable even in situations where they are trying to help with reconstruction or just provide security in a situation of near anarchy like Iraq.

The worst effects of the practices of torture endorsed by the Bush Administration have, of course, been felt by the many innocent victims. Kahlid El-Masri, a German citizen, was picked up, flown to Afghanstan and tortured by the CIA and then released without charge after the Bush Administration realized it had the wrong man. Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer who was born in Syria, was apprehended when in was in transit between flights in New York. Through the euphemistic “extraordinary rendition” program he was sent to his native country where he was was brutally tortured and then released without charge. Arar told Jane Mayer in a New Yorker article that “he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. 'You just give up,' he said. 'You become like an animal,'” (“Outsourcing Torture: The secret history of America's 'extraordinary rendition' program,” The New Yorker, February 14, 2005, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact6).

Dr. Steven Miles in a June 2006 Morning Edition interview about his book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror, claims that "torture has never been confined to narrow channels,” and argues against its utility on the grounds that it “yields bad information,” (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5516533).

The book adds to the many documented accounts of people who have been sent to Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan or to secret CIA prisons where torture is freely practiced.

In one harrowing account Dr. Miles presents the case of a young taxi driver who, in yet another case of mistaken identity, was apprehended in Afghanistan by US soldiers and tortured to death over a series of days. The first autopsy found that Dilawar's death was a “homicide, caused by 'blunt force injuries to lower extremities'...later a coroner testified that Dilawar's legs were 'pulpified' and that the body looked as if it had been 'run over by a truck.'” Dilawar's family ultimately received three different death certificates as the Pentagon gradually changed its claim that he had died “of natural causes” to admitting that he had been seriously beaten. No one was charged with murder.

So when we think about the relative merits of torture, even from a practical standpoint, the evidence against its efficacy is overwhelming. Torture is unreliable, damaging to our national reputation abroad, and ultimately responsible for causing irreparable harm to many when our government fails time and time again to substantiate its suspicions of terrorism or even terrorist intent.

As American citizens, do we really want to go on deluding ourselves that we're living in an episode of 24? Or do we have the rational principles and the moral stomach to look at what our government has wrought by using torture in the name of “protecting” American citizens and utterly reject this madness? If we continue on this path will we have any standing at all in the court of world opinion for claiming that we are different from repressive governments around the world whose attitude towards torture is at least more honest, if just as brutal? And when will we come clean with our citizenry about what we are doing to people in the name of fighting terrorism?

We Don't Condone Torture, We Just Choreograph It

We Don't Condone Torture, We Just Choreograph It

In an April 11th interview with ABC News this past week, President Bush admitted that he knew his top national security advisers, including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who chaired these meetings, discussed and approved details about how the CIA would interrogate so-called “high value” al Qaeda suspects. Bush told White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "[Y]es, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved," (http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/Story?id=4635175).

This interview was a follow-up to an ABC News report on April 8^th which alleged that, “a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding. The high-level discussions about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed, sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic,” (http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256&page=1).

You can call it “enhanced interrogation,” but I strongly suspect that if these same techniques were used against American citizens or soldiers by other governments, our leaders would be protesting loud and clear that they were being “tortured.”

Given the Bush Administration's credibility gap on its pre-war information, it is also disheartening to find out that these same “top advisors” like Condoleeza Rice have repeatedly testified to Congress under oath that the Bush Administration does not use or condone torture, even as she chaired meetings where the scripts for torture sessions were being prepared and then passed on to the CIA.

In our legal system, we hold people accountable for being accessories to crime just as much we those who actually commit the crime in question. If you drive a bank robber to the bank that person then holds up, you are subject to prosecution just as much as the person who robbed the bank.

Should we not then hold Secretary Rice and these other top advisors as both legally and morally culpable for their participation in torture practices that are specifically proscribed under our legal system?

It is time for the American people to decide what kind of nation we really are. How do we want the rest of the world to see us? Do we believe in the rule of law? And do we believe that our leaders should be held accountable for following the laws of our land?

Those who argue in favor of retaining torture for “pragmatic” reasons, even as a a hypothetical “last resort” to frighten potential terrorists, always turn to the “ticking bomb” example.

In this scenario, a terrorist has a device – explosive, maybe nuclear – that will kill thousands of people, and we can get the code to turn it off in time, if only we're willing and able to use torture. If this sounds like a bad Hollywood cliff-hanger, it should, because it only happens on TV.

What should shock us out of our complacency about this idea that we would only use torture in this kind of a worst-case scenario is that we now have solid evidence that torture has been used and approved by our leaders again and again, not only against “high value” Al Qaeda suspects, but also against innocent bystanders who have been “rendered” for torture to cooperating nations because they happened to pass through a U.S. airport or had a name similar to that of an alleged terrorists. None of these instances involved a “ticking bomb” or any imminent threat to U.S. citizens.

President Bush can call it “connecting the dots” as he did in his ABC interview, and claim that he is just protecting the American people, but the fact is that Bush and his advisors repeatedly have told the American people that they do not condone or practice torture, when they were not only authorizing torture but planning it out to the last detail.

It is time for Americans to reject the use of torture absolutely and unequivocally. We should demand that our leaders adhere to the definition of torture outlined under the Geneva Conventions, and we should demand the resignation of those top advisers who not only advocated torture but choreographed its application to those held in U.S. custody.

We can begin by calling for the resignation of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice who chaired these meetings and allegedly told the CIA to “go for it.”

You can see the Secretary's repeated testimony under oath as well as ABC news report allegations and a videotape of an unidentified victim experiencing waterboarding in a new film, “Condi Must GO!” (http://bravenewfilms.org/watch/19970507/35714?utm_source=rgemail ) along with a petition calling for the Secretary's immediate resignation.

Americans need to hold this administration accountable not only for its illegal use of torture but also for its hypocrisy in saying that it rejects torture even as it employs these abhorrent practices under another name.

The TV Turn Off – Is It Still Relevant?

The TV Turn Off – Is It Still Relevant?

Next Monday, April 21^st, kicks off the annual “Turn off Your TV” week not only across the U.S. but in countries throughout the world, and some parents may be celebrating because fewer and fewer kids are watching TV.

But if TV is losing eyeballs, personal computers, iPods, and cell phones are rapidly emerging in its place as the hot new entertainment devices, especially for kids.

In the meantime, manufacturers (of televisions, computers, and cell phones) and content providers (from the traditional networks to Internet giants like Google) are all competing furiously to make sure that the next generation stays plugged in.

So what is a parent to do if the TV goes off and the kids just migrate down the hall to the PC or keep on texting? After all, there is a lot of money betting on parental surrender to this brave new world of instant entertainment.

I realized just how desperate the networks are to hold onto their tech-saavy teen audience when I came across a recent commercial while exercising at the gym.

There were the teens telling their mom they'd have to work her into their busy schedules after hockey and ballet. Even the youngest said in her sweet little girl voice, “Mom, I think I can pencil you in between 3 and 3:30 p.m.” Then a frame later you see the happy family all united in front of the television watching Ice Age, courtesy of a high-tech recording device that let the family all get together when they finally found the time to spend together –to watch TV, of course.

After I managed to stop gaping in horror at this travesty of family life– I think my jaw really did drop-- I began to try to figure out which of the many offensive elements of this family drama I found the most revolting.

Was it the idea that a parent should be subordinate to a child's after-school activities (I mean who is paying for all these after school activities anyway)?

Was it the idea of depicting six-year-olds as having social calendars (what happened to the idea of “down time” or even just “playing”, preferably outside instead of in front of the TV)?

Or was it the idea that “family time” would ever be centered around a television set (instead of something that actually fosters communication like the dinner table)?

In fact, some companies are exploiting parental concerns about the lost of “family time” by promising them that technology can actually help kids and parents overcome their hectic schedules and find time to reconnect. Last fall Panasonic even launched a new advertising campaign – "Bring Back Family Time” purportedly to “explore and document how High Definition technologies can enrich the American lifestyle.”

As part of the program, up to 30 families will be awarded a $20,000 suite of high definition products including Plasma HDTVs, Blu-ray Players, HD Camcorders, Digital Still Cameras and other products and services that Panasonic wants to promote. You can have family time in this tech-dominated fantasy – you just have to pay for it!

Clearly the PC, the cell phone, and music devices like the iPod have become part of the fabric of American life, just like the TV before them. But this means parents need to think in new ways about how they help their kids manage this media saturation before they find that their kids really are plugged in 24/7 and largely doing so without anyone being aware of what they are watching or communicating.

For example, last September, Forrester Research found that those between the ages of 18 and 26 are are more likely to say that their cell phones or personal computers are more important media devices than the family television, and it's precisely because these devices let them access media and communicate privately without coming under the scrutiny of the parental eye that is usually focused on the TV. Kids under 18 are even more likely to follow this trend.

So this week of April 21^st, don't just think about turning off the family TV set. Instead, you might want to start a conversation about the following

• What device matters the most to your kids- is it the TV, the computer, the iPod, or their cell phones? Which one would they be most reluctant to give up? The answers might surprise you.

• Ask the kids to monitor how much time they spend on the computer, the cell phone, listening to music, and watching TV. Challenge them to limit the time they do these things on school nights and discuss a possible reward if their school work improves or grades go up as a result.

• Ask your kids what they think about “family time?” What do you all enjoy doing most together? Would they consider canceling the cable subscription and investing the monthly expense in something that would benefit the whole family (such as a trampoline, or a vacation, or new bikes)?

And when the week ends, don't just go back to old habits. Monitoring and limiting what your kids see on their television and computer screens isn't just about protecting them. It gives them the opportunity to keep their childhood free of the often corrosive media culture that seems to saturate every aspect of our daily lives. If they spend more time outside on their bikes, or inside talking to you at the dinner table, or even curled up beside you reading a book, that's precious time that you're giving them to just be themselves, not some advertiser's ideal of what a child or a family ought to be.

When Words Come Back to Haunt You

When Words Come Back to Haunt You

“Nico?” No answer. “Nico?” “Nico, can you hear me?” I repeat. Finally, he deigns to answer: “I'm taking Uncle Phillip's advice and ignoring you.”

I realize he's really upset that I've taken him out of school early to make it to a dentist appointment. I should have known the minute he seated himself in the back row of the mini-van as far from me as possible.

“But why is he talking about his uncle?” I wonder for about a second, and then I suddenly remember.

Words can back to haunt you in strange ways, and sometimes they are the very words you would never even give a second thought.

A few days earlier I had been reading a letter to my seventeen-year-old son, Alejandro, that I'd written to his father when we were both in college. In it I was complaining that my own mother had distracted me with so many task I nearly started a kitchen fire. “My brother, Phil, told me the solution was to go upstairs where I could pretend not to hear her,” I read aloud, laughing as I folded up the letter. Alejandro replied, “It sure explains a lot,” obviously thinking I'd turned into my own mother, at least as far as he was concerned. Clearly Nico had been listening in as well.

We continue driving in silence as I try to figure out how to distract Nico from his simmering fury.

When we reach the dentist, the hygienist asks Nico how he is, and he immediately launches into his grievances: “I was just here” he said. “My mother is bringing me back here for no reason whatsoever.”

Patiently I explain to Nico that he had indeed visited the dentist a few weeks ago when his brother had an appointment, but now it was his turn. “Could you tell him when he was here last?” I ask the young woman, and after she tells him it was six months ago, Nico grudgingly submits to having his teeth cleaned.

Then the dentist walks in and says, “Hi buddy, how are you?” Nico is happy to return his high five, but he isn't through complaining about me. “She,” he says accusingly, pointing at me, “interrupted my school work and made me leave early. She doesn't value my education.”

“Oh,” the dentist replies, clearly taken aback while I flushed red. “Well, my son likes school a lot too.”

“Where is this coming from?” I wonder as we return to the car, and then I realize that although the logic is completely twisted, the words are all mine. I do emphasize my negatives especially about climbing the roof or skateboarding without a helmet with a “no excuses whatsoever” finale, and as a professor, I'm sure the terms “value” and “education” come up fairly often in my conversation as well.

By now I am as mad at Nico as he is at me, so when we get in the car and he wants to hear “Skippin' Stones,” I say no as emphatically and turn on Ella Fitzgerald to soothe my nerves, knowing full well that this is one kind of music I like and Nico doesn't.

Nico realizes it's not time to push me so he stays quiet for about five minutes. Then he asks where we're going since he sees we're not on the direct route home.

“To pick up Tomas,” I answer. “Oh great, we're picking up Tomas,” Nico repeats happily, clearly all over his tantrum at the dentist and glad to have the chance to tell his tale of woe to his older brother.

As I stop outside the Lotta Burger and let Tomas in, I too let go of my lingering resentment. I dial up Flypsyde's “Skippin' Stones,” and Tomas starts to sing along, “Cause I'm skippin' town I'm skippin stones.” I join in on the next lines --“I'm skippin' town. I'm skippin' stones.”

I glance in the rear view mirror. Nico isn't even going to complain about my singing. He is listening too intently. “Probably trying to catch the 'inappropriate' words,” I think to myself and smile.

Endless War: Can We Afford It?

Endless War: Can We Afford It?

Yesterday General David Petraeus briefed Congress on U.S. military strategy in Iraq and provided a sober but overall positive assessment of the success of the surge in the numbers of soldier deployed to Iraq. Although Petraeus was unwilling to commit himself to any specifics about when the U.S. might begin withdrawing troops, the consensus of Senators, reporters, and pundits was that we are likely to have 140,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2008, a figure higher than when the U.S. began the surge in 2007.

The problem with taking General Petraeus's testimony as a guideline for future Iraq policy is that it obscures the forest while focusing on the trees. After five years, the U.S. remains committed to a “stay the course” policy of establishing security in a country that many military analysts believe will require at least three more years of a U.S. occupation to achieve that goal. That assumption doesn't include the growing evidence that the current Iraqi government under President Nouri al-Maliki is completely incompetent and has made little if any political progress towards a genuine power-sharing agreement between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. We could achieve stability only to have it quickly disintegrate if the political situation remains as chaotic as it has been for the past five years.

This is not to discount the real moral dilemma that many Americans, particularly those on the ground in Iraq feel, as a result of the instability, civilian deaths and general trauma that the U.S. invasion has precipitated over the past five years. They may refer to the “Crate and Barrel” ethos of “you break it, you pay for it,” as a reason for the U.S. staying in Iraq, but the analogy falls short as we enter a sixth year of occupation. You may well pay for a piece of crystal you break at a department store, but you don't have to provide security when thugs break in and destroy most of the store's contents, nor volunteer to protect the store while its management ineffectively struggles to find a new security system.

The problem with the “endless” war in Iraq – and that is precisely what General Petraeus's testimony tends towards – is that it provides no accountability and no real way of measuring progress. As long as we narrowly pursue the will-o-the-wisp of security in Iraq, we fail to debate the larger questions that are far more important: For example, can Iraq, a deeply factionalized and tribal country be preserved as a nation? Is the U.S. occupation simply keeping at bay an inevitable civil war or at least civil dissolution? Are there other ways that Iraq's security could be achieved, such as through multi-lateral talks with its neighbors, including Iran?

General Petraeus argues that the current policy in Iraq is “worth it,” but he provides no evidence and no quantification of how we might measure that “worth.” Do we really believe that if everything goes perfectly in Iraq, we will really win the global war on terror? Is such a war even winnable in military terms?

Finally, what no one seems to be asking is the trillion-dollar question. Can we really afford this war? Are we sacrificing our economic security for some chimera of national security?

Currently the Iraq war is costing roughly $200 million a day, or $6 billion every month. But it's not just the fact that the billions of dollars we are spending on this occupation could be spent on roads, schools, health care etc. It's much worse than that. We are already failing to spend this money on our own domestic needs.

If you look at the budget that President Bush introduced in January, it includes $200 billion cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years and a $2 billion reduction in funding to Health and Human Services Department. Even if Congress rejects those cuts, it can only do so by pursuing two politically unpalatable paths: either to raise taxes or to continue borrowing money, creating an even larger budget deficit, already at $163 billion in fiscal 2007.

The whole Iraq adventure has been based on a dangerous economic fallacy: that we can supply the soldiers to fight the war on a volunteer basis and that we can finance the war by borrowing money abroad, instead of passing the burden to taxpayers.

The result is that we have an exhausted, nearly broken army, and compromised readiness to meet any other military crisis in another part of the world.

Moreover, the recent credit crisis should give our leaders fair warning that even the faith and credit of the United States government is not limited. Do we really want to become the world's biggest debtor nation? Are there not risks to national security in that very dependence on having foreign banks and foreign governments as our creditors? With its economy headed for recession, a weak dollar, and little leverage abroad, the U.S. will find itself in a very tight spot if those we are indebted to for this military adventure decide to call in their chips.

And what will happen to the American economy and the American taxpayer when the war bill finally comes due at the very same time as we expect to confront significant spending pressures from the Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security programs?

It is time for opponents to the war in Congress and the media in general to start asking tough questions of candidates related to their support of continuation of the war. If any presidential candidate were to propose a national health care system, the first question out of every reporter's mouth would be, “Senator, how do you propose to pay for that?” And yet Senator McCain, who has said he could see an occupation lasting ten years and who would like to see more soldiers sent to Iraq, has been given a free base on the crucial question of how he intends to fund this continuing occupation. Is he going to raise taxes? Reinstate the draft to provide these additional military resources?

These are questions that the media and voters need to be asking, just as they should be demanding a wider debate among all the presidential candidates on how they plan to balance domestic needs with foreign policy objectives and how they might going about addressing national security and the need to confront terrorism in ways that are both more effective and less costly that this endless war in Iraq.

Thoughts of Spring

Thoughts of Spring

Okay, so it's a bit past the actual vernal equinox, but Spring never follows the calendar in my experience. It is that most capricious of seasons -- here one day, gone the next -- as if the weather can't make up its mind whether it wants to be blizzarding, blustery or merely gently breezy.

When I was growing up in Michigan, it seemed as if Spring only lasted about two days. We'd have the occasional unexpected snowstorm in April and then a few days when the crocuses peeped out and the lilacs bloomed, and suddenly by Memorial Day, the hot, humid days of summer were in full force.

In northern California where I lived for many years, Spring usually arrives in February with rain and wildflowers and a green so intense you'd think the hills behind Stanford University had been transported from the Emerald Isles. I used to live for those weeks, going outside with sinuses inflamed, sneezing, and with pounding temples, just to enjoy the greenery I knew would have disappeared by the summer dry season.

Here in the New Mexico Spring is more of a conundrum. It's the driest, windiest, and sometimes downright unpleasant season of the year, especially when the wind blows hard enough to kick up clouds of dust so large that cars turn on their headlights in the daytime.

It seems like a small miracle to see the small green leaves on the cottonwoods, the forsythia in golden abundance, and the lilacs starting to bloom when no rain has fallen for months, and the few thin clouds that pass overhead seem to mock us with moisture that remains tantalizingly out of reach.

Fortunately, I live in an area along the river, where families have enjoyed the right to take water from the Rio Grande through a maze of irrigation ditches for hundreds of years. It's the river that saves Spring here, generating a swath of green along its meandering path for miles and miles.

But I am determined to help things along as much as possible so I sow my wildflowers, and plant my first hardy perennials and water by hand until I finally see the ditch fill up and coordinate with neighbors when it's time to open the gates and let my backyard flood.

It's one of the great pleasures of my home that even though I'm technically inside the city limits, I feel as if I were still in the countryside. If I walk a few hundred yards along the irrigation ditch – I run into pigs, geese, ducks, chickens, and goats, as well as horses and fields of hay grown to support them.

Less than a mile away there's an organic farm that grows produce and fields of lavender. Across the road there's a field that when flooded attracts Canadian geese, sandhill cranes, and the occasional pheasant. If you want to encounter more exotic fowl, you just have to drive along another road to find a nearly suicidal flock of peahens and their resident peacock, who is much more cautious about dashing into the road in front of passing vehicles than his female counterparts. The speed limit there is 25 mph, but most people go a lot slower; no one wants to have to carry the body of a deceased peahen to its angry owner.

So for now, while we wait for the monsoon season to arrive and enjoy the windy but mild weather of April, I'll draw on the bounty of the Rio Grande and watch the slow greening of the high desert along its banks.

A Fence at all Costs

A Fence at All Costs

Now that Homeland Security's plan to build a 470-mile fence has run into many obstacles during the past few months including: angry property-holders who don't want a fence running through their homes or land without reasonable compensation; angry environmentalists who want to know why the fence cannot be built without protecting fragile habitats, and for those following the story, angry voters, who wonder why well-connected individuals and business are having their properties exempted from the fence-building while small property owners, some of whom have held the same land in their families since before the existence of the U.S. are now being told to give it up.

On Tuesday, April 1^st, Michael Chertoff declared that he would use his authority to bypass many laws in order to get the fence built by the end of 2008. While Mr. Chertoff argues that the fence is necessary to prevent illegal activity and drug violence from spilling over the Mexican border into the U.S., one can only question the willingness of a public official to run roughshod over so many basic American rights, including: the right not to be deprived of one's property without adequate compensation and due process and the right to allow challenges to laws to proceed through the court system to determine whether or not they are constitutional. Mr. Chertoff's actions would short-circuit these legal protections and due process all in the name of building a fence that is not even a contiguous barrier against entry.

The deprivation of individual property rights is particularly galling because it is being selectively applied, mostly to small property owners, while resort owners and those who are closely connected to the Bush administration are not having to fence their properties. One of the most egregious examples, is the exemption of 6,000 acres of property owned by Dallas billionaire, Ray L. Hunt and his relatives, one of the wealthiest oil and gas dynasties in the world. Hunt, a close friend of President George W. Bush, recently donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush’s presidential library.

In keeping with the general secrecy that pervades the Bush administration, the Department of Homeland Security has refused to release information on its selection process, its environmental investigations, or any part of the process by which some property owners lose their land rights and others remain exempt.

Once again, the Bush administration is taking a “father knows best” approach to the security of our nation's borders and tell those citizens who actually live on the border and face the daily burden of illegal crossing to put up and shut up when it comes to sacrificing their land rights for a fence whose utility and whose costs, both economic and environmental, are still a subject of debate.

Before Americans let this happen, it is time to call for Congressional hearings into the ways Homeland Security is implementing the legislation to build a fence on the U.S-Mexican border and to open up to public scrutiny their rationale for their efforts to compel property owners to allow the construction of a fence on their land without due process.

Consumer Debt - The Next Credit Crisis?

Consumer Debt: The Next Credit Crisis?

Economists and public policy researchers have been saying the same thing for years. Americans cannot go on spending the U.S. economy into continued prosperity and themselves into hock. And yet recent history seems continually to thumb its nose at these gloom and doom prophesies.

First, it was the combination of a bull stock market and low interest rates that made it seem as if one could borrow forever, invest in the latest hot stocks, and make money.

Then home equity lines and rising housing prices turned the family homestead into a convenient piggy-bank, not just for actual home improvements, but for new cars, vacations, and paying off credit card balances that had gotten a little out of hand.

Now the market has been down for four straight months, the values of homes are falling, and people are finding that their net equity may be zero or worse, they may actually owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth.

So far most pundits have focused on the crisis in the housing market as the most significant aspect of this economic downturn, but there are worse scenarios ahead to keep you up at night.

Consumer spending accounts for a substantial amount of the U.S. gross domestic product; it counted for as much as 72 percent of GDP as recently as April 2007. Yet in February of 2008 consumers turned in their weakest spending performance in 17 months, suggesting that this key component of the U.S. economic engine is also slowing down significantly. If you think of the average American consumer as the “little engine that could,” imagine what the economic impact will be if that consumer turns into the “little engine that can't any longer.” Few public officials want to acknowledge that we may be in a recession now, but a fall-off in consumer spending may make recession inevitable and not necessarily the mild contraction everyone keeps hoping for.

At the same time, many U.S. credit card holders are finding themselves deeper and deeper in debt, amounting to nearly $1 trillion as of 2007. And what are credit card companies doing to help the American consumer? They're shortening the time to pay, increasing fees for late payments, piling on the fine print of their contractual agreements and laughing themselves all the way to the bank.

It used to be that credit card companies made most of their money on the interest owed by consumers who didn't pay off their balances in full each month; those who do pay the full amount monthly are referred to “deadbeats” by these companies. But increasingly, credit card companies are making far more money off the fees they charge. According to RK Hammer, a bank-card advisory firm, card issuers took in $13 billion in fees [in 2006], not counting $12 billion in late fees (Kiplinger, February 22, 2007).

You may feel like you're the only one who ignores the the fine print on your credit card or those supplemental “changes to your account” that you get with your monthly bill, but don't feel stupid or lazy because you just can't take the time to figure out what your contract with your credit card issuer really means. Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard's law school gave her third-year law students the exercise of figuring out what the fine print on an average credit card really meant, and they found it far more challenging than they expected. If Harvard law students cannot figure this out, how can the average consumer be expected to understand the fine print, especially if it includes language like “we reserve the right to change the terms of this Agreement at any time”?

Although Congress has periodically investigated these abuses and even wrung their hands over the way credit card companies take advantage of the most vulnerable consumers, it has done little to prevent them. That may finally be about to change with the introduction of legislation by Senator Carl Levin and Representative Carolyn Maloney who have put forward a cardholder's bill of rights. This bill would require such consumer protections as a ban on collecting interest for amounts already paid, timely notice of changes in interest rates, and the ability to cancel a card if rates suddenly rise. Professor Warren has also advocated for a Financial Product Safety Commission to regulate the industry, which so far has largely operated on its own terms.

These are useful first steps. But in the meantime, consumers should follow the old Latin adage: caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware, whenever they are tempted to open a new credit card account to get an extra 10% off the next purchase, or get money back on their gas purchases, or any other seeming “freebie.” In most cases, you're better off using your debit card and not paying the annual fee or any other “hidden” fee in your credit card contract. If you do want a credit card, try getting one through your local credit union or savings and loan, where you can talk to a real human being if you run into any kind of trouble.

Credit card users should also realize that in a troubled economy they hold far more power than they might think. If the U.S. economy depends so heavily on consumer spending to stay healthy, now is the time for U.S. consumers to exercise their voting and lobbying power by letting Congress know they want a level playing field for credit card holders, and at least enough regulation to ensure that someone who borrows a little money to buy a dishwasher or a stereo system is not paying many times the value of that purchase by falling into the credit card trap.

If the U.S. wants to avoid the next credit crisis, it needs to take a pro-active approach to consumer credit card debt and not wait for the housing bubble to be followed by a wave of credit defaults and bankruptcies as consumers fall back on the plastic as their last resort for making ends meet.

Saving Wall Street - Failing Main Street

Saving Wall Street; Failing Main Street

The headlines just seem to get gloomier with each passing week of 2008. Housing prices keep falling, gas prices rise, and consumer confidence is at a five-year low.

But where are the tax-payers' efforts being directed? Not at the average consumer or at the home-owners no longer able to keep up with adjustable-rate mortgages. Instead millions of dollars of government credit has been extended to keep banks lending money to one another and to bail out investment firms like Bear Stearns.

The extension of credit makes sense in an environment where banks are suddenly distrustful of one another and how much more bad debt will surface as the full extent of the sub-prime mortgage crisis becomes known. One can even make the argument that arranging the shot-gun marriage of Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase can be justified if it helped to contain a sudden run, not just on Bear Stearns but other firms with similar investments.

However, since it is not merely the U.S. Government, but ultimately U.S. taxpayers, namely you and me, who are financing these transactions, it also makes sense to ask what are the risks and benefits for us? UC-Berkeley public policy professor and commentator, Robert Reich, points out that when the British government bailed out one its largest failing banks it took shares of stock so that British taxpayer would reap the gains if the shares became sufficiently valuable. In the case of the JP Morgan-Bear Stearns deal, U.S. taxpayers are essentially providing a kind of corporate welfare, in which they lose if the JP Morgan acquisition proves a bust, but if the acquisition pays off, JP Morgan shareholders win and U.S. taxpayers still lose. Why voters tolerate this kind of lose-lose situation over and over again as the government steps in to handle various financial bubbles from the savings and loan scandal to the current credit crisis is a mystery.

Capitalism is supposed to be a zero-sum game, but in the current U.S. political and economic system, it's a rigged game where individuals can lose but corporations and corporate bankers always seem to come out ahead. Conservative politicians have always argued that what is good for business is good for the average American, but recent economic developments increasingly call that into question, and the increasing burden of business bailouts on the American taxpayer may finally bring these issues to the foreground for debate in the upcoming election.