I claim no originality in reaching this conclusion. According to a report by Jodi Kantor in the New York Times (Nov. 7, 2012), several historians who have been meeting regularly with President Obama told him much the same thing. These scholars reportedly described the Tea Party as being motivated less by economic issues and more by “…nativism and a fear of modernity.” Consider the various groups and constituencies who pushed back hard against the right-wing Republican agenda, in the recent Presidential and congressional election: women, African Americans, Latinos, and younger voters. Behind these constituencies are cultural trends that have emerged largely within the past 50 years; e.g., the women’s rights movement (including reproductive rights); the civil rights movement; recent efforts at immigration reform; and the student activism that began in the late 1960s. (In 1971, the 26^th amendment to the Constitution granted 18-year-olds the right to vote).

Coming of age in the early and mid-60s, I grew up in the small town version of Don Draper’s world. There were no corporate board rooms in my little town, but there was plenty of intolerance and “neophobia.” To be fair, most of my friends and their parents, as well as my teachers, were decent, good-hearted people. But the same strains of nativism and fear of the modern that tainted the 2012 presidential campaign also colored the attitudes of many in the town where I grew up.

There were only a handful of black and Hispanic students in my high school, and they were usually regarded with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. My school’s one Native American student was widely believed to have his heart literally “on the wrong side”, and was shunned by the other students. The term “gay” had yet to achieve wide usage, and those with homosexual leanings were called by names nowadays considered archaic slurs. “The pill” had been in use for only a few years and—as of 1964—was still illegal in eight states. Women who used it were called “loose”, or worse. Indeed, women were generally regarded with the same sort of amused condescension and leering looks as exhibited by the men in Don Draper’s “Mad Men” office. My mother—a psychiatric social worker—was considered an oddity at the time: a smart, professional woman with a life outside the home.

Mitt Romney governed my state, Massachusetts, for four years, and I believe he is, at heart, a decent and caring man. But he is also a man of an earlier and less enlightened age.  Furthermore, my impression of the far right wing of the Republican party—particularly those inspired by the Tea Party–is that its membership would have been quite at home in my little town, circa 1963. Their ideas seem starkly at odds not only with modernity, but with the views of most Americans who voted in the recent election. The far right’s antipathy toward immigrants, minorities, women, gay people, welfare recipients, and those who do not view the U.S. as a “Christian nation” seems to have alienated large segments of the electorate. And the right wing’s gravity seems to have tugged the Republican Party into the black hole of neophobic fear-mongering.

H.L. Mencken once said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” I believe the right wing of the Republican Party has preyed on just such fears, invoking hobgoblins that haunted an earlier and darker America—aliens, socialists, feminists, gays, “welfare queens,” and scary incarnations of “The Other.” The America of “Mad Men” is not the country we know or desire today. Most of the American people seem to have said that with their votes.

The post The Grand Old Neophobic Party appeared first on Etalkinghead.

Remember Joe the Plumber? Rank-and-file Americans understood that Obama did not respect them or their values. Mitt Romney’s recent comment that 47 percent of Americans are dependent on government and, therefore, inclined to support Obama, ignited the same sort of firestorm. Millions of voters realized that Romney did not understand them or their situation.

The two statements have three things in common: (1) Both were delivered to wealthy financial supporters during fundraising events; (2) Both were well received by the people who heard the original statements; and (3) both were factually wrong.

When addressing well heeled and friendly crowds, Romney is much more detailed about his plans if elected than when campaigning out among “ordinary” people. He fleshes out possible programs and tells which current government departments and agencies he would eliminate, reform or merge. (He has started to get more specific at regular campaign events since the 47 percent remark.) Obama continues to be much more candid when speaking privately with committed campaign contributors than when speaking to regular voters.

Obama and Romney seem to share the confident wonkiness that prevails throughout much of government. Underscoring this is a National Journal survey of political insiders which reveals that nearly six of ten political leaders and policy functionaries believe that rank-and-file citizens do not know enough to have meaningful opinions on important issues. What the voters perceive as condescension and arrogance, the leaders see as their wisdom versus the people’s ignorance. The wonkiness has become elitism.

Four years ago, comments made by Obama to private groups revealed much more about his style and eventual governing philosophy than his general campaign statements. Is the same true of Romney? Are his private comments indicative of how he would govern if elected?

People all across the country know that the two political parties in Washington share many attitudes. The tea parties and Ron Paul tapped into that knowledge. They capitalized on the alienation and ambivalence that many Americans feel toward Washington. If Obama is reelected, his governing style will not change. Romney’s 47 percent comment suggests that he would have a similar governing style. But more and more ordinary people are rejecting that style.

They reject what they sense is the underlying attitude among political elites – that the elites know more and, therefore, know best. Perhaps this means that the tea parties will find a lot more work to do. Perhaps they are just beginning to remake American politics.

The post Are More Tea Parties in America’s Future? appeared first on Etalkinghead.

The making of a political deal is messy and crude. The debt ceiling deal was especially so. Tea party supporters took a lot of the abuse during the standoff. They were called just about everything by Democrats in Congress, a few of their fellow Republicans and liberals across the country. Late-night comedians and the mainstream media had a field day excoriating the tea partiers.

They called them crazy, Hobbits, zombies, vultures, bloodsuckers, dumb, robots, murderers, stupid, idiotic, Nazis, evil, delusional, racists, addicts, narrow-minded, imbeciles, extremists, devils, dogs, monsters, terrorists, know-nothings and several names that parents do not want their children to hear.

The descriptive language of left-leaning commentators was heard nightly on television as they tried to frame the debate in their terms. The tea parties did not care about framing. They cared about getting their way. Did they? Or were they pawns in a larger game?

You may decide for yourself who almost drove the United States over a cliff. I will try to separate the verbal war from the legislative battle leading to the final debt ceiling bill. What was the fight really about? Why did it take so long to resolve? Who won and who lost?

Note: In researching this report, I have relied on reporters and other writers and staff at the White House and on both side of the aisle in the House and Senate, plus a few elected members of Congress. My reporting is only as accurate as their version of events – and they may be spinning. One thing I did note is that the people who were most critical of President Obama were White House staffers. Perhaps the tension of the final hours, when everything seemed to be slipping away, and the frustration of indecision loosened tongues once the crisis passed.

Different definitions of control

The fight was less about the debt ceiling than about control. But each faction had a different definition of control and, therefore, a different version of victory.

For President Obama, the fight was about having Congress bring him a solution that he would accept. We have seen this before. This is his modus operandi. He stays as far above the fray as possible, not committing. In the United States Senate – and before that in the Illinois Senate – Obama cast an amazing number of non-votes: He declined to vote for or against and simply voted “present.”

His instinct is to announce what he expects in the final deal but to avoid and defer decisions along the way. Obama wants to control the process while others work out the details. He awaits the finished product before giving his judgment. Sometimes, he critiques the work in progress and he is known in the White House as a kibitzer. In this situation, he made clear his goal: The debt ceiling legislation must include new revenues as well as spending cuts.

Liberals and the Democratic leadership in Congress wanted to force the Republicans to break with the no-new-taxes vow of the tea partiers. They wanted to split the GOP and weaken it for the 2012 elections. The president encouraged them.

According to conservatives, control meant something akin to ending the New Deal. They believe that left-wing intellectuals have been running the country since the 1930s, interspersed with periods of competent but also (especially recently) incompetent Republican leadership. Some conservatives saw the tea partiers as a vehicle to break the media-academic-think tank-wonk driven entitlement crowd’s hold on the levers of government.

The hateful invective that resulted as the many sides and styles tried to engage was not new to American politics. The less time available to approve a bill increases the level of the rhetoric. House Speaker Boehner wanted to take up the debt ceiling extension early this year but Obama delayed, criticizing Republicans for not wanting to focus on “more immediate problems” first. The president apparently believed that he was more likely to get his way if he waited and forced the Republicans to make a quick deal to avoid default. Obama may have miscounted the votes.

Taxes and the tea parties

On television and in press reports, the struggle seemed to be over raising taxes. The tea parties refused to budge. Too often, they said, when taxes are included in a bill that aims to reduce spending, those taxes get diverted to new spending, not deficit reduction. Often, pet projects of powerful congressmen siphon off the new taxes.

The Democrats followed President Obama down a path that seemed reasonable. They wanted what they called a balanced approach: Cut spending and raise taxes. It turned into a political blind alley because what seems reasonable to most people is not at all reasonable if you do not have the votes. Without the votes, it is bad politics because all it does is delay cobbling together a deal that can attract enough votes.

The tea parties and many Republicans kept saying that the problem is not that Americans are under-taxed. The problem is too much spending. Obama made speeches calling the Republicans obstinate and selfish. He said that Social Security and other programs were in danger because the tea parties were driving the country over the cliff. Obama may not have believed those parts of the research reports his campaign staff conducted that showed that Americans have come to see many entitlement programs as plums doled out to favored special interests. Those are the entitlements to cut, these voters say.

For more on that attitude, please see Tripping the Entitlements Trap

Obama kept going on television, with diminishing results. He repeated that the tea parties and/or the Republicans would drive the country over the cliff. Then everything changed when the unexpected happened: The House passed a debt ceiling extension that contained no new taxes, with most tea party Republicans joining the Democrats in voting against their own party’s bill. The situation spun out of Obama’s control.

Forcing Obama to give up control

At that point, senior White House officials realized that a key part of their strategy – to force House Republicans to ask the White House for help in rounding up Democrats to replace defecting Republicans in exchange for new taxes – would not work. Speaker John Boehner had delivered a bill without Democratic support. Obama was advised not to demand that Boehner take the bill back and add taxes to it because adding taxes might cost more GOP votes than would be gained from the Democratic side of the aisle. The president could not take the chance that another impasse might run out the clock, staff advised. So the president blasted the just-passed bill and refused to accept it as a basis for continued negotiations. But he got the White House more engaged in negotiations as the Senate began work on a new bill to replace the House bill.

Suddenly, the Republicans stopped dealing with the Democratic leaders in Congress. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, began to negotiate directly with the Obama administration – specifically with Vice President Joe Biden, whom he trusted. The GOP said that direct negotiations eliminated the time-consuming and unnecessary step of engaging the Congressional Democratic leadership, which was a waste of time because all the Democratic leaders did was run to the White House for orders and talking points.

Angry, Obama tried to force McConnell to include the House and Senate Democrats and House Speaker John Boehner. The White House stressed that Boehner needed to be included because he would have difficulty delivering the votes of House tea partiers for anything that he did not help to negotiate. This would have brought things right back to the intractable impasse.

Boehner ended Obama’s feint by saying that he was being kept fully informed by McConnell and presumed that the president would be fully informed by his own vice president (zing!). He added that he believed that any deal crafted with the vice president’s help would convince enough House Democrats to vote yes to make up for no votes of tea party Republicans (zing!). Obama was assured by staff that the McConnell-Biden negotiations would prevent the crazies from grabbing the steering wheel because Biden provided a degree of control in the White House. The president conceded and the mano a mano negotiating between McConnell and Biden – both known as skilled and perceptive negotiators – continued.

Questioning Obama’s approach

Throughout the struggle, the president’s approach struck many as illogical. According to people from both parties and in the White House, the president decided early not to gamble that he would “win” a debt ceiling impasse that resulted in default. But by sticking to a losing position, he played a game of chicken with the calendar. He upped the odds of default even more by demanding that potential deals be presented to him for his approval or rejection before being voted on in the House and Senate. That took time as the president rejected a few possible deals and amended at least one to the point that its chief sponsor could no longer support it. Then the demand was ignored.

All the time, the tea parties kept saying no to new taxes. Many called them crazy or worse. Missed in this blistering angst is a simple but reliable truth: Being thought of as crazy has advantages. One advantage: The people who call you crazy may assume that you really are crazy. They will, therefore, figure that you just might pull down the building and destroy everything. We know that most of the tea partiers refused to compromise. They stood their ground. They told us they would not yield, before, during and after the debt ceiling crisis. They never wavered. So for all we know, the tea party Republicans just might have pulled down everything – except that the president tossed in the towel.

The tea parties stared down Obama and the Democrats in Congress. They stared down their own Republican leadership. They won.

Make no mistake: The conservatives also won. During the contentious negotiations, a re-orientation of the starting point for developing future federal budgets seems to have occurred. Instead of an emphasis on appropriations and earmarks, with ever-growing federal programs, federal budgets may now begin with program cuts.

What would Reagan do?

We have an example of how the image of being a little crazy can affect events. President Reagan was a sportscaster, an actor, a union leader, a pitchman and a president. He was also underestimated. During the 1980 campaign, his detractors called him dumb, demented and dangerous. They said he was a warmonger, a cowboy who would nuke Teheran if the 52 American hostages were not freed. Shortly before his inauguration, his incoming national security team started feeding Iran the line that Reagan, unstable and angry, was going to order an attack soon after he took office. The Iranians unleased a tirade of hostility and threats of retaliation. Then, a few minutes after Reagan took the oath of office, Iran released the hostages.

Would Reagan have attacked Iran? He never said. Most people close to the situation understood that the perception of craziness can be a powerful political tool. The despots of the Arab Spring lost control when they fulfilled their threats of force. How much more powerful is a weapon unused than one used? Reagan knew the answer.

Uncharted territory

If you had walked around the House and Senate office buildings in the days after the debt ceiling bill was enacted, you would have noticed a level of stress that is unusual when the elected members of Congress are away from Washington. Normally, when the bosses are away, the staffers relax and plan their own get-aways to the beach or the mountains. But an awareness of change was apparent. Democratic staffers were sullen. They knew things had changed. Tea party Republican staffers were ebullient. They were already at work on the next mission. Other Republican staff members were guarded, hopeful but wary.

They all know that they will be in uncharted territory when Congress returns after Labor Day. In a sense, the tea parties accomplished much more of their agenda, much sooner, than anyone imagined they would. The entitlement state has stalled. The liberal agenda is no longer the starting point. In this new reality, most Democrats and many Republicans will not be able to adjust. But the tea parties give signs that they may overplay their hand.

Their victory, so satisfying to tea party supporters, has left many other voters troubled. Most Americans like the idea of compromise. Will we have a collision between the tea parties, with their promise of reform, and moderate voters, who prefer less excitement and more conciliation? The voters, after all, get to decide who goes to Washington.

If you do not get elected or reelected, you have no vote in Congress. Time will tell, but someone might want to remind the tea party Republicans that hubris can take away their votes.

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President Obama did not break the tea parties by forcing the Republicans to accept new tax revenues but the president did get a deal that pushes the deficit ceiling beyond the 2012 election.

Now, if Obama can line up a few Democratic votes in the House to replace unhappy tea party Republicans, he will sign the deal into law. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, as good a vote counter as anyone in Washington, predicts that more than 60 Democrats will buck Minority Leader Pelosi and back the deal.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell can take credit for drawing the White House into negotiations at the critical point. Speaker Boehner can take credit for navigating his plan through the House, which forced the president to abandon his attempts to jam new taxes into the final agreement. Senate Majority Leader Reid will take a share of the credit even if it appears that the GOP negotiated directly with the White House throughout Saturday and Sunday, with Vice President Biden a bigger part of the negotiations than anyone realized or anticipated.

And the president, with his bully pulpit, will take and get credit.

Grover Norquist will get credit for setting the agenda: No new taxes. His importance in budget issues will grow. The tea parties will be emboldened but at the risk of continued defections among independent voters who have been turned off by the inflexibility of many tea party-backed House members.

Perhaps only the liberals in the House Democratic leadership will not be able to crow.

Oh, we the people can’t crow. We have seem our retirement accounts drop and we may still see a downgraded debt rating resulting in higher interest rates. We the people need to keep Washington on a shorter lead.

The post Debt Deal: Winners and Losers appeared first on Etalkinghead.

I was glad to have him tackle education more honestly than I’ve been used to with politicians, to the point of proposing the dismantling of the troublesome No Child Left Behind Act. Likewise, I am glad he stuck to his guns on the health care bill, while also offering concessions if they were practical and didn’t compromise the overall aim of the bill. On the environmental front, of course, he offered the good talk about the potential stimulating effects of renewable energy and expanded public transportation options on the economy and the potential for job growth. However, he never once mentioned the climate.

A former co-worker of mine rebutted to a point I made on that that Obama needs to switch the messaging to adapt to an anti-climate atmosphere. Republicans and their cohorts have been successful in re-branding “climate change” as a term tantamount to taxes and inconvenience and the death of jobs. Oh, and a fairy tale. As such, Obama needs to rebrand the message to make it palatable to the public and the new House of Representatives.

I understand, but this is dangerous terrain. I voted for Obama….there are a lot of things he’s accomplished that I am proud of (the advancement of equal pay for the genders, health insurance), but I won’t make excuses that he’s fallen way short of my expectation, especially on climate change. In the words of Jon Stewart: “he [Obama] ran as a visionary, but has served as a functionary.”

First off, Obama mentioned clean coal and nuclear.

Let’s talk about clean coal. THERE IS NO SUCH THING. It’s a myth and a distraction. It’s the real fairy tale the industry fabricated to lull us into the notion that we can keep all of our current conveniences and still combat climate change, while they still make their billions. The technology for clean coal is decades away, if it ever even comes to fruition. We don’t have that time, and we need to put our mind to real solutions.

For the most part, clean coal technology refers to CCS (Carbon Capture and Sequestration)–that is, the capturing emissions from coal plants and injecting it either terrestially (into rocks, mountains, etc.) or under the ocean floor. Again, it’s a technology that might be up to a generation away. Plus, its potential environmental implications are dire and range from the obliteration of ocean life on a micro- or macro-level (if the injected carbon escapes, it could over-acidify the ocean, causing mass die-offs of marine organisms), to eroding large amounts of our topsoil and infiltrating groundwater resources, to even the possibility of inducing earthquakes through the disruption of tectonic plates.

The implemention and execution of CCS technology would require more energy input than the process itself could possibly capture and attempt to store or neutralize. And in the end, none of it attempts to address the issue of extraction, which itself carries an enormous carbon and ecological footprint.

Contrary to popular belief, recent studies by respectable scientific authorities

(such as the National Academies of Science) indicate that we also seem to be about to enter an era of peak coal as well as oil. Though we technically may have the reserves, it is preserved so deeply in the Earth, we can’t practically go about getting it without doing great damage.

Right now, we’re blowing up hundreds of mountains in the Southeastern United states to churn out coal. This phenomenon, known as mountain-top removal (or MTR), not only is causing enormous and irreversible damage to the land, water, air and wildlife, it is also the main contributor of a form of genocide of the culture and communities of the people of Appalachia.

Whether or not it’s “clean,” there is no way we can get at the coal at the rate we would need to continue powering our current lifestyles as our populations grows exponentially without continuing and even escalating this practice. There is no way we can rely on coal on any large-scale and avert catastrophic climate change.

Then there’s nuclear, which I am a bit more ambivalent about, but also ultimately against. Unlike clean coal, nuclear is more genuinely a carbon neutral method of energy production. However, what sways me to shake my head when Obama sings its praises is this: it’s merely the exchanging of potential for one enormous environmental catastrophe for another, and it’s another distraction. The safety issues of nuclear, it’s health implications, and the waste disposal dilemma, are all things that have failed to be addressed and remedied to a sufficient level.

Here’s the thing: even people who poll in favor of nuclear poll resoundingly are against having a plant anywhere within a 100-mile radius of their house.

If and when a nuclear plant gets built, it will be built in the backyards of poor people. And when the plants leaks or has a full-scale accident (which it will), it is the poor who will suffer and die. The current plants may have escaped the infamy of a meltdown, but there are still a myriad of reports on leaks and incidences of increased disease of those who reside near them. I lived in Vermont, which depended mostly on the Yankee Nuclear Power Plant for its energy, and this was the case.

Additionally, as with “clean coal,” we can’t build nuclear power plants at the rate needed to address our current and projected emissions scenario. If there was an opportunity for nuclear to fill that gap, we missed the boat on it awhile back.

Where does this leave us?

I am a huge proponet of renewables like wind and solar (when implemented intelligently and with concern and precaution for wildlife), increased energy efficiency (most of our technology can be upgraded to be 50-75% more efficient, a low-hanging fruit), and yes, a huge expansion of mass transit, expecially in the railroad sector. But even these things can’t do enough to bridge the gap.

Here’s the truth: we need to scale way back on our consumption, in all ways.

We need to not only change lightbulbs, but turn off the lights when we’re not using them or don’t need them. We need to not only buy hybrids, but avoid driving whenever possible. We need to not only buy organic or local meat, but eat a lot less meat (or even no meat). Some of us may need to not only consider raising our children as ethical environmentalists, but consider the concept of foregoing having biological children at all.

We may need to break down our nationalized and globalized economy to a network of local or regional ones that can operate autonomously and interdependently as needed. Our economy may need to switch to one not based on growth, but a steady state.

We won’t need to live like a “caveman” as climate deniers like to say the evil treehuggers want, but we may need to–gasp!–revert a few decades, at least in our emphasis on indepent local economies and the amount to which we drive, eat meat and use energy.

And you know what? I think it would lead to better job stability, less debt, and more happiness, as a result.

But suggesting these things aren’t politically palatable, are they?

But here’s what I wonder: how come it is politically palatable to bash gay marriage, to praise guns, to demonize Muslims? And wasn’t there a time when talk of ending slavery, or giving women the vote, was also politically infeasible? Wasn’t the argument against these things partially its inferred economic implications?

The Right has gotten pretty good at playing the moral highground, even when ironically preaching prejudice, hate and violence (however thinly veiled in hypotheticals and metaphor). Democrats have gotten good at being overintellectual, and talking policy. But the common people, including me, at the end of day, don’t care about policy. They care about being safe, having their bills payed, getting medical treatment when needed and without much complication or fuss, and having their children fed and educated. And I think, after that, a good many of them do care about being moral, though some may be confused as to what morality means.

Climate change is a moral issue. The poor people will suffer first and foremost the worst of its implications. They already are. Countless species will go the way of the dodo, many of which we depend on for our own livelihoods and survival. Ultimately, climate change threatens us all, our ability to feed our children, and be safe.

This is the message Obama missed.

Even if he understandably steered clear of controversial hot topics like population, he should have reminded us of the moral angle of doing something about climate change, he should’ve dug in his heels as he did on healthcare.

Just as he brought in patients who benefitted the healthcare law, he should’ve brought in an Inuit to sit in the audience, whose homeland is melting away, a girl from Africa whose land is drying up…

As for the green-collar message, it’s good and needed, but it’s not enough. By itself, it’s just static-fluff.

Want to convince working class America of it’s opporunity? Bring in people who actually work installing solar panels, whose lives have changed. There are those out there. Show them to the world, and then give us something real to grab on to, something that really inspires hope.

Otherwise, even to me, it sounds like we’re pinning too much hope on pipedreams.

For original post, please see my “Writing for Survival” blog at www.survivalwriter.blogspot.com

The post Obama’s State of the Union: Missing the Message appeared first on Etalkinghead.

Both Jackie Robinson, who was the first black Major Leaguer and Obama, the first black President faced enormous pressure to avoid being labeled the “angry black man.”

Once Robinson demonstrated his great abilities, he became free to be as aggressive as any white player. The question for Obama is: can he free himself to aggressively and effectively employ the substantial leverage that his office bestows on him? My considered judgment is that it will take intense personal growth to accomplish that.

The reason is that Obama’s ability to remain calm and seemingly in control is, I believe, unlike Robinson’s self constraint. The President’s composure most likely has its roots well below the surface. If I am correct the President will be hard-pressed to change. Indeed, how does a President find time for self-reflection or counseling under the pressure of an infinitely demanding office?

If he has awareness and wants to change, the President should consider carefully whether and when to try to break through his own emotional shield. That decision may be one of the most difficult of his presidency. It is because his beginning attempts might seem out of character, and inappropriate. An example was when the President called the Wall Street bankers “fat cats” on 60 Minutes on Sunday night, when he knew he was going to meet with them Monday morning to encourage them to lend more to small businesses. Whatever he decides, there are still many things he can do.

Protecting his own persona is vital and so he should have people with skills like James Carville and Paul Begala at his side countering the outrageous attacks from the far right.

Without such powerful advocates he is allowing his opposition free reign to characterize what he does as extreme even when often it is quite mild and middle of the road.

By avoiding being characterized as the “angry black man” and by projecting the aura of someone who knows how to stay in control, he may unwittingly be inciting the hyper-hysterical members of the media and the Tea Party to provoke him with ever more bizarre accusations. One of the aims of these attacks is to force him to lose control and to indeed act like the “angry black man.” When he or his staff do not respond, he appears weak and is prey to plain old bullying. A President should not allow himself to be in such a position and there are experienced professionals ready to set up a war room to instantaneously counter unsubstantiated attacks.

Furthermore, instead of letting the country know he is in charge and not Wall Street, he is allowing major financiers to continue their old reckless gambling, self-aggrandizing ways. If Roosevelt had the power to close the banks, why is Obama’s arms seemingly tied in a knot? The least he can do is to insist that the rules being written and implemented under the recently passed Wall Street reform act succeed in holding the financiers as accountable as possible.

In a different matter, he did take executive action. He empowered the EPA to begin the process of regulating heat-trapping gases. He was and is reluctant, however, to be emphatic about it. Why not broadcast widely that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is taking ground breaking initiatives to deal with the climate crisis? Instead it was recently reported In the NY Times that new controls will be postponed from January to July 2011. I believe he will receive public support if he resolves to act affirmatively., even though Jay Rockefeller and other Democratic Senators from coal mining states threaten to close down the EPA’s powers under the Clean Air Act. In order to forestall such a move the President should reaffirm his message that he will veto any attempt to mitigate the authority of the EPA on climate crises issues.

What especially bewilders the public is that Obama while campaigning proved to be one of the greatest orators in history, but on becoming President he is unable to explain what he is trying to do in every day terms.

For example, to this day he hasn’t explained how he is going to take one half trillion dollars from Medicare and still improve upon it dramatically; nor has he explained to the public how he can enroll 30 million more people onto the rolls of health insurance and be able to pay for it. In order for the health care legislation to become better understood, why not send every household in the country a brief outline describing how it would work, and how it would be more than financially self-sustaining?

Along these lines Obama should carefully consider the new report from the Center for American Progress detailing a myriad of executive powers constitutionally available to his office. Here are only a few examples —

“Conserve federal lands for future generations; Manage public lands to support a balanced energy strategy;

Launch the new consumer financial protection bureau with an aggressive agenda to protect and empower consumers; Accelerate the implementation of the Small Business Jobs Act; Speed up home mortgage modifications.” www.americanprogress.org

President Barack Obama gave up the opportunity of the century when he allowed the Bush tax cuts to continue. Has there been a time in our history when a president had the unquestionable authority to end an immoral gift to the wealthy?

From this day forward, every move the president makes will be measured against what he gave away with hardly lifting a finger.

Abe Markman, MSW is a recipient of The New York Society for Ethical Culture 2010 Community Service Award, and has fifty years of professional experience as a social worker. He is the co-founder of the Neighborhood Self-Help By Older Persons Project (Neighborhood SHOPP) in the Bronx, NY.

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The WSJ article included the following Hannity-Rove exchange from Fox’s “Hannity” show:

Hannity: “You may be right in the end, I don’t know. We can look into our crystal ball and can say things. I would argue back to you gently that I don’t think we can make progress in stopping the Obama agenda with rhino Republicans that, you know are not going to be there when the solid votes are needed.”

Rove: “I agree. But we also can’t make progress if we have candidates who got serious character problems, who cause ordinary voters who are not philosophically aligned with us to not vote for our candidates out of concern of what they said and what they do.”

Is Rove implying the Republican Party has previously only offered candidates with impeccable character or that we should only offer candidates that would appeal to “voters who are not philosophically aligned with us”? If he is referring to Independents, polls indicate they want candidates that oppose big government, growing deficits and excessive taxation which the “Tea Party” candidates best represent.

Republican leaders and strategists, like Rove, should welcome the “Tea Party “candidates with open arms. They represent average Americans that were brave enough to run for public office in spite of the current environment of attacking the person and not the issues. Instead of rolling out the red carpet, they tout the “Buckley Rule” which is to support the most conservative candidate that is electable. The fallacy of this rule is it believes that the Republican Party, and not the voters, know which candidate is “electable” and compromising the principles and ideology that conservative voters revere is the price of victory. The Republican Party’s support of candidates like Castle and Scozzafava clearly evidence of this fallacy and that their choice of candidates has not always been in line with their constituents. Once these victorious RINOs like Senators Snow, Collins, Graham, as well as Rep. Castle, get in office, they often vote with Democrats on key issues such as Sen. Graham and Rep. Castles support of “Americas Power Act”, a.k.a “Cap and Trade”. While the Republican Party can say they had an electoral victory with these candidates, are they representing conservative principles?

It is unfathomable at a time when conservative voters are energized and united that the Republican Party would betray its own platform and candidates. Unless, of course, the true agenda of the Republican Party isn’t to restore America back to its founding principles and values but to restore its own established, elitist power base. A glaring example of elitist mentality is the comments of Senator Isakson (R-GA) after meeting senate nominee, Sharon Angle.

“She’s a fiscal conservative and that sort of thing. But it was not the kind of speech you would make if you were speaking to the unwashed back home, so to speak.”

Sen. Isakson was not referring to voters bathing habits, but as the Encarta Dictionary defines, “unwashed” is an offensive term referring to the lower social classes or masses of ordinary folk. This superiority complex may explain the less than enthusiastic embracing by the Republican establishment to stand by “Tea Party” candidates like Christine O’Donnell.

Reactions from defeated establishment Republican candidates also demonstrate their sense of entitlement and elitist mentality by rejecting their own constituents’ voices. They have ranged from changing party affiliation (Gov. Charlie Crist, FL- I), running a write-in campaign (Murkowski-AK) and refusing to support the voters chosen candidates (Mike Castle,R-DE & Bill McCollum, R-FL).

The real issue here is that both parties have forgotten that they are elected to be servants of the people not to have the people serve them. The elitist mentality has dominated the leadership of both political parties for too long. Our Founding Fathers foresaw that pride and greed were human traits that needed to be resisted by our elected officials; however, should they fail, the people needed tools to change and restrain government. Those tools include our rights to free speech, bear arms and vote. We have exercised our free speech at town hall meetings, huge rallies and local protests. Our elected officials have turned a deaf ear to our cries, but they can’t ignore our vote.

One solution, a stronger third party, would divide the conservative vote thereby benefitting the Democrats in the short term. Alternatively, there is progress by the Republican Party in addressing the concerns of conservative Americans with the recent release of the “The Pledge To America.” If Republicans, like Rep. McCarthy (R-CA), continue to focus on restoring the Republic, complying with the Constitution, and repealing bills that expand Federal government power then there will be a slow re-development of trust and loyalty. However, if the Republican Party continues to believe that they are superior to the “unwashed” common folk, they will be the ones getting a “bath” in upcoming primaries and elections.

The post Republican Elitism Revealed appeared first on Etalkinghead.

I grew up in an inner-city area. The only wild animals I ever saw were squirrels, pigeons and the occasional rat, and their wildness was in question. I never saw a deer or raccoon other than behind bars until I went away to college in a more rural and mountainous setting. My eyes opened up…

Before that, at my first university, I took a class in environmental and bio-medical ethics. I was assigned a project about wolves, which was the beginning of me embarking on some path I still haven’t quite finished traveling on. At the end of the semester, the professor, an animal biologist with a compassionate streak for his subjects, bought me a book on wolves as a gift to foster my new passion. As he put it in my hands, he said, “When you understand the wolves, the rest kind of all comes together…it’s like coming home to yourself.”

Wolves are not the only subject of my fascination with nature, but they definitely marked the beginning and the pinnacle of it. Because of them, I put aside my poetry and my dreams of writing to pursue a path as a wildlife biologist and natural resource scientist. I couldn’t underscore the significance of this enough even if I spent a whole book writing on it. I do not possess a naturally scientific mind; numbers scare me, and though I love nature, I still have a city girl’s stubborn fear at being in it alone or for too long. Yet despite this, I went down this path, bringing with me a poet’s perspective of our endangered wild world and marrying it to the science I learned over the course of the next several years…

Sometimes, I have to say, I find myself a bit putoff by the plague of ecological illiteracy that pervades our society.

The other day at an open reading, someone read a poem she wrote. At one point, she speaks of a family of ducks, describing the father duck and its role in the group. Something in me cringed because I know ducks by nature to be a promiscuous species. That is, the daddy duck doesn’t stick around much after he’s planted his seed, and he definitely doesn’t invest in his children.

Geese, on the other hand, are monogamous and both genders work together to raise their young. I know this from my schooling. I also know a general rule of thumb for figuring out the sexual proclivities of many species: among animals, the species in which it’s hard to differentiate gender because the two look nearly identical are usually monogamous and raise young together. However, when the colors differentiate wildly among an animal of the same species, this indicates the males are generally gigolos.

This is particularly true of the majority of bird species: consider the emerald green of a mallard’s neck as compared to the dull, drab brown of the female, or the multi-eyed tail of a male peacock next to his intended. Now, think of the little brown sparrows that are everywhere, or the geese, and how you can never tell one from another, think of the lack of bright crisp colors among them all.

BUT GETTING BACK TO WOLVES….

Wolves, whose physical differences are slight (some males tend to be slightly bigger than the females), usually mate for life.

Okay, so some of you may be finding my depiction of wolves as overly romantic, a case of the goggle-eyes for some specimen of charismatic megafauna.

I’ll admit, yes, maybe I am romanticizing a bit. But when I lived in Alaska I never feared a wolf attack while walking through the woods. In all of our recorded North American history, there has only been ONE case of a healthy wolf killing a human being. I have often had to correct a zoogoer as she instructs her child of a wolf’s man-eating nature. So, perhaps my romanticism is a backlash against the severe and overindulgent (and quite undeserved) hatred, fear and persecution we have subjected them to over the past several hundred years and up to today, an aversion often begun in the cradle when our toddler ears first hear the words, “the Big Bad Wolf.”

Our ignorance about wolves runs deep and brings with it bloody consequences. Even in our supposedly civilized modern world, wolves are still shot from planes and helicopters. In Alaska, this is known as an aerial hunting and predator program, and it claims the lives of hundreds of wolves every year.

In Alaska, and other places out West where similar programs are being considered, the politicians prey on people’s basic ignorance of wildlife population dynamics. We are told the wolves overpopulate, that they are eating all of our livestock and wild prey, that they are a danger. That, even though it may sound sad, killing them off is an tragic necessity to ensure our race’s own well-being and survival.

Here’s a quick ecology lesson: in natural conditions (like Alaska), top-food chain predators such as wolves self-regulate their populations. It hits a threshold and levels off. Through some sheer miracle of biological intuition the wolves themselves are not conscious of, their breeding and birthing cycles are dependent upon availability of food, the amount of territory they have, and the harshness of the season, among other factors. A female wolf’s body will literally self-abort fertilized eggs under strained conditions. Also, with wolves, it is usually only the alpha pair in a given pack that has puppies, further restricting population growth. Prey species on the other hand, do not self-regulate, and in the absence of top-chain predators will grow unrestrained, overbrowsing their territory and eventually committing a collective suicide.

Now, here’s what happens in Alaska: wolves are blamed for killing off moose populations–nevermind that most studies on the subject show that wolves actually have a relatively low success rate in killing an adult moose (Have you ever seen a moose up close? They are mighty big MF’ers; one quick kick of their hind legs to a wolf’s head will crack its skull open).

Now, we are told that the people of Alaska need to hunt moose for subsistence, especially indigenous people, and that the wolves are competing too much with people for basic food (again, a moose stands a much better chance with a wolf pack than a single well-aimed hunting rifle). What politicians like ex-governors Frank Murkowski and Sarah Palin (who actually had the audacity to reinstitute a bounty hunt on wolves reminiscent of the Wild West days of slaughtering buffalo) won’t tell you is this: out-of-state hunting tourists bring in a nice revenue, and the state wants to keep them coming. Essentially, Alaska is harvesting more moose by instituting mass culls on their predators in select areas (often areas that get a lot of out-of-state tourists looking to bag the biggest bull moose they can find) to keep to money flowing.

Here’s what happens with the wolf culls: they kill a bunch of them willy-nilly, shooting them from the air like it’s a video game target. It’s a slow, gory and agonizing death, being shot piecemeal like that.

Afterwards in the absence of the wolves, moose populations EXPLODE. Then either one of two things happen, which is that the out-of-state sportshunters have a field day picking off the vast abundance of moose, or the moose now overbrowse their territories and so eat themselves out of their own food supply. Their populations then crash. This usually happens right around the time wolf populations are recovering. Then we get to blame the wolves again, and authorize more killings, and so the cycle goes on. And on. And on.

When I lived in Alaska, I worked with the Alaska Wildlife Alliance (AWA), on this issue. I collected signatures for a ballot to overturn the program (the state’s people voted twice to get rid of it by ballot, though by an admittedly small majority). First observation: individuals of indigenous origin were resoundingly against the program (perhaps because, like biologists, their rich heritage gives them a deeper understanding of the predator-prey relationship than the rest of us).

Second observation: People in favor of the program liked to pin on the opposition hyperbolic assumptions–that we are crazy, PETA-loving vegans. This was ironic because even though they called us the zealots, they were the ones often pelting rocks at our table and screaming things like, “The only good wolf is a dead wolf.” Now, almost everyone I met in Alaska, even in the cities, either hunt, fish, or has someone in the family who does it. The people of the AWA are no different. They have buck hides drying in their garages, too. But there’s a difference, both biologically and ethically, between hunting an ungulate (often shot at close range in a clean kill) for the purpose of food, and killing a predator by gunning it down in a plane because it threatens our sense of the heirarchy.

A lot of the predator control proponents will say the science is on their side. It’s not, as my basic biology lesson up above illustrates. Also, make note of the fact that the state of AK never bothered really to take any censuses of wolf and moose populations to back up their claims, and disregarded those censuses they did take that contradicted the claims.

Don’t believe me? Well, then I defer to the findings of the National Academies of Science Natural Resources, the foremost scientific authority in the country (and one of the biggest in the world), which also concluded in an extensive study that such programs can rarely be justified scientifically, and in fact, may inflict longer-term damage on both the predator and prey species, as well as the larger ecosystem.

If you want to put an end to Alaska’s egregious predator control program, please call the state’s Governor’s office to express your dismay and disgust over this program. Also, consider becoming a member and contributing to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, which works on this issue.

**Laura Kiesel is a freelance writer and editor, with a background in natural resources and wildlife biology. She is the founder and sole author of the blog, Writing for Survival, which is about sustainability, social justice, and scraping by as a scribe.

The post Alaska Kills Wolves! appeared first on Etalkinghead.

But as for straws…well, when did my vendetta against them begin in earnest? I had, these past few years, intermittenly refused them at restaurants, though it didn’t bother me so much if I forgot to or not (which I often did). If they still adorned my glass, I took it in stride and shrugged it off. I don’t eat meat, rarely drive and hang-dry my clothes, so I have done my part…there are so much bigger things to worry about, right?

Last year, I attended the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin. During the evenings, there were small informal dinner meet-ups. As such informal talks do, this discussion for the meet-up I joined weaved and bobbed between the very serious (our potential imminent extinction) to the mundane, to abstract esoteric thought and even gender arguments (are women more environmental than men?). And then, very simply, one of my colleagues picked up a straw out of his glass to prove a point of how prolifigately wasteful we humans can be.

“Do we really need these?” he asked, the offending straw pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Indeed, we don’t, and we all nodded and stared at the offenders that took up residence in all of our own drink glasses, shaking our heads in shame…

I wish I could say from then on, I ardently objected to the straw, but it wasn’t a strong enough motivator to make me kick the habit for good. Like most people, I sometimes need a visual cue, often something strongly visceral, before I can really change a bad behavior (or even come to really understand the consequences of a societal behavior), and this was no exception.

That visual cue came only a month or so later, while I was perusing an article in either Discover or National Geographic on the phenomenon of plastic waste in our ocean, which tends to aggregate into large patches that come to resemble evil science fiction creatures. I turned a page and then–BAM!–a picture of a biopsied duck, its belly gorged with remnants of our plastic waste, mostly drinking straws. It hit my own stomach like a sucker punch, crept into my cranium and stuck there. It gave me a bad dream.

Ducks don’t eat straws because they are dumb. Bits of plastic straws, especially glimmering in the obscuring underwater view, resemble the iridiscent fish that comprise many a seabird’s savory meals. And are the ducks really so dumb to think that there would be fish in the ocean as opposed to our garbage?

A similar thing happens with our plastic bags, that we so often see dancing on the streets in the wind (as so poetically portrayed in the movie “American Beauty”) that almost always eventually drift into our oceans, lakes and rivers: sea mammals like seals and whales mistake them for jellyfish (also the same fate of most of the balloons we find romantic as we set them “free” into the sky at the peak of their buoyancy, seemingly forgetting or denying that they are inevitably destined to deflate and litter elsewhere out of our sight).

Most of the animals who swallow our plastic waste won’t immediately choke to death, but rather the bag will take up residence in their GI tract, where it will slowly but surely strangle their disgestive organs. Just because you are good about throwing away your trash into a can, does not mean it stays out of the ocean either: storms and winds cause a lot of trash to migrate, the smaller the plastic item (straws), the more likely it will end up elsewhere, usually someplace wet.

If I seem to be making too much of a big deal about one little straw, consider this: in the United States we discard of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF STRAWS EVERY YEAR! Think of that number. Think of how many straws you might have even blown through this week. Most likely, in your lifetime, the amount of straws you threw out could build several makeshift homes in developing countries. The drinking straws I am decrying are also made of PLASTIC, and are a direct product of the petrochemical (translation: oil and oil refinery) industry, an enormous market, one large outlet of which exists on the Gulf Coast.

By supporting plastic, we are also supporting continued oil production and dependence. Not to mention, as a product made of petrochemicals, straws and other plastics are chock-full of known carcinogens like Bisphenol A (BPA), that leech both into our drinks through straws and into the ocean when they wind up there as waste. This is something those with young kids might especially want to consider when offering their children another sippy straw-equipped drink box.

But the biggest question is: what are they good for?

I mean, straws were something that didn’t really come into vogue until a few decades ago. Before that, we lived well without them. For the bigger environmental choices, like driving, we can argue that we sometimes NEED to do it–that because of the way our society is structured, we sometimes simply can’t get from point A to point B without getting into a car–and if point B is a hospital or a job, what choice do we have? Even the most adamant of the ecologically-conscious occasionally drive. They do it not because they are hypocrites but because fully abstaining from driving requires a larger infrastructual change that extends way beyond what we can just grasp with our personal choices, and many of us simply can’t afford the more efficient or sustainable alternatives.

But none of this can be said about the straw. In almost every situation but a couple (say, you have a handicap that prevents you from having mobile use of your hands and arms), they are nothing but frivolous and contrived conveniences, so small by itself, but so much a part of a larger desctructive whole–how much smaller (or even non-existent) would these ocean plastic patches be if we went sans straws and other superfluous plastic items (utensils, cups, etc.)?

Unlike car culture, our plastic culture is subject to a paradigm shift that can be instigated more from the bottom up than the top down: personal choice trumps political will here. That is why straws are in fact the ultimate symbol of both our profound tendency towards being needlessly wasteful, as well as our extreme potential towards achieving a more sustainable society through our smaller personal choices. And, unlike the automobile, more sustainable alternatives (namely reusable straws made of non-cancerous materials or disposable straws made of biodegradable material) are affordable.

This is one way we can change which won’t hurt us at all.

To view my complete article about straws and to find out about what you can do, please visit my blog.

The post Moving Towards Sustainability: Why the Plastic Drinking Straw Signals a Starting Point appeared first on Etalkinghead.

In the area of national security and military intervention, it’s been a fascinating exercise in political forensics to witness the response to President Obama’s firing of General Stanley McChrystal. If history demonstrates anything it’s that its lessons are perpetually susceptible to revision based on new evidence and more informed analysis. So it is that over the centuries, the credibility of Herodotus’ rendering of the Peloponnesian War has attenuated, while that of Thucydides is deemed more persuasive.

Moreover, the deeper one delves into the tiered nature of history, the clearer it becomes that discrete causes for events are the exception rather than the rule. A prototypical example is the causes of the Great War, now known as World War One. The standard causal explanation, which has demonstrable credibility, is the abysmal complexity and countervailing influences of the treaty arrangements that prevailed in advance of war.

The issue of Belgium’s neutrality obligations date to the 1839 Treaty of London, which isn’t commonly discussed except in the more erudite–that is, unread–texts. However, it wasn’t merely Belgium’s neutrality that was guaranteed under Article VII of the treaty, but rather the grim obligations of the signatories in the event of foreign invasion.

Peeling away yet another layer, Britain’s declaration of war against Germany, subsequent to the latter’s invasion of Belgium in August 1914, was less a matter of upholding its treaty obligations than with Britain’s fear of Germany’s control of Belgium’s sea ports. A key message in matters as complex as war is that we must move well beyond the gloss of casual observation into the sub-text of nuanced motivations.

To that end, and regardless of the historical incident in question, it’s wise to discern patterns of events that evolved over time, ones that indict or reward strategic prescience and the relative efficacy of outcomes. With respect to war, and in contrast to the modern liberal who naively endorses soft power, Plato’s maxim prevails: “It’s only the dead who will see the end of war.”

Axiomatic in the equation is that a consensus among historians typically fractures beyond the empirical description of events. For example, there is little disagreement regarding the effectiveness of weapons and tactics in the Hundred Years War, but the legitimacy of Britain’s claims on the French throne and the inbred role of dynastic succession as well as Salic Law, are debated to this day.

On a broader scale, however, the sway of culture and the values that underwrite it is, perhaps, more challenging to decipher, especially when its proximity is so close that it taints our lens. Besides understanding history’s many lessons, it’s at least as important that we recognize the insidious and noxious cultural influences in our midst, so we can quickly neutralize and correct them.

Against that background, it’s particularly curious that the deeper message in Mr. Obama’s firing of General McChrystal has been largely overlooked. Even in a military that has suffered at the emasculating hands of political correctness, weakness is correctly understood as a trait our enemy will reflexively exploit. Dating to the appeasement of Hitler before World War Two, as well as the studied reticence to confront Communism under Stalin and fascism under Mussolini, modern liberalism created a template for weakness in foreign affairs that is as resilient today as it is damaging to national security.

Facile analysts in the mainstream media were quick to compare Obama’s decision to President Truman’s firing of Gen. MacAurthur, asserting that both generals were insubordinate. However, the code of military conduct in a civilian model is the low-hanging fruit of this matter. The deeper and more instructive lesson is that the acerbic battle between Truman and MacArthur signaled the genesis of the American left’s descent into national security irrelevance, this despite Truman’s unwavering opposition to Communism.

Indeed, under the political aegis of the newly formed Progressive Party in 1948, Henry Wallace, FDR’s vice-president, began shaping a foreign policy framework that willfully failed to recognize the threat of Communism. With few exceptions, the ensuing decades have witnessed the tectonic depreciation of the Democrats’ steely defense of freedom under FDR against Hitler and the Japanese.

The glaring sub-text, which has been scrupulously overlooked by the mainstream media, is that Obama’s firing of McChrystal was merely the latest example of a clash of national security polities.

Liberals, whom Obama faithfully represents, disdain all war and have what amounts to a genetic predisposition to avoid it at all costs. The clear message in the Rolling Stone interview is that McChrystal’s staff profoundly disagreed with the president’s stringent rules of engagement. even in the context of a counter-insurgency strategy, which predictably hobbles our military’s efforts. In this instance the dots are pre-connected to MacArthur’s caustic criticism of the Progressive Party’s evolving appeasement of Communism, and Obama’s approach to our current war is just as feckless.

When combined with his instinctive inability to call radical Islam by its proper name, Obama’s apology tour, his obeisance to the tyrants of Iran, his stunning indifference to Russia’s evolving autocratic, anti-democratic policies, and his benign response to North Korea’s resurgent belligerence, merely reanimate the policy of Democratic appeasement that began decades ago.

Mainstream Americans have a hard-wired understanding that a policy of weakness is doomed to fail. This is a fundamentally flawed approach to dealing with our enemies, and the left’s unambiguous role in perpetuating it with strategic policies at odds with our national security interests, is as dangerous as it is ignorant of history.

Mella blogs at http://clearcommentary.townhall.com.

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