Barack Obama was a good progressive when he was an organizer and state legislator in Illinois and has a good telecom policy.
John Edwards has done a tremendous amount of work to highlight inequality and corporate power in our society and has a good agricultural policy.
Hillary Clinton has worked for many years on the good side of a spectrum of human rights issues and has a decent energy plan.
Now your turn. Can you come up with something genuinely nice to say on issues that matter to you, not a backhanded compliment, about each of our Democratic frontrunners? I know you can.
I have five main political interests, as things go; climate change, agriculture, women's rights, war and corporate power. All of the major presidential candidates have entirely worn out their welcome with me on one or more of them. Or started off bad and have failed to convince me that they're truly reformed from their positions of a few years or months ago. And let's not even get into healthcare. National insurance plans with private sector partnerships, my donkey.
Partisan leanings? Eh. I've long said I'd vote for the Democrat. Also that I'm not inspired by any of them like with Dean in 2004. They don't do IT for me. If I'm supposed to pick someone because I just like them and am really motivated by them, or their policies, well, I've got a pretty high threshold for that. My only honest reaction is 'why can't I pick Gore, like I wanted to in the first place?'
"Everybody knows the insurance companies make money by not providing care." - Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Oct. 30, 2007
"[The Republicans] don't get that a family of four making $50,000 a year can't pay $20,000 a year for healthcare ... they don't get the reality of it." - Sen. Claire McCaskill, Oct. 18, 2007
Democrats "have got to embrace Medicaid and Medicare," which puts the Republicans in the position of "opposing what your mother's on." - Gov. Howard Dean, Oct. 19, 2007
Last night's debate had at least Kucinich embracing Medicare for all. I think that's a good way to talk about it. We already have the government infrastructure for Medicare. It alarms absolutely no one, except for Republicans who worry it might prove that government can work to make people's lives better.
Again with the news about the eminent, catastrophic collapse of our human habitat ... unless we do something about it immediately.
Is this an electoral issue? It could be, though it'd be nice if more politicians were encouraged to campaign on it. Is it a winning issue? Yes, yes it is. As it happens, even auto industry union workers and SUV drivers understand that major, systemic changes need to be made so that living our lives doesn't destroy the health of the ecosystems that provide our air, water and food.
Is it just me, or is does it seem like the temperature's setting in to get warmer, or like the weather all over the world is going crazy, while Congress' response has been tepid? Right. Just me, then. And on that note, I bring you the latest updates on our species' ongoing attempt to commit suicide by mass starvation, flooding, droughts, and disease, as well as the ongoing attempts by others to prevent that from happening.
Bill McKibben, who's run the Step It Up! efforts to draw attention to the climate crisis has urged people to support carbon emission reductions of 80% by 2050. That people are paying attention, that Congress is starting to pay attention and take early steps, is encouraging. Before an Inconvenient Truth came out and a great many committed activist organizations laid the groundwork for awareness, not even that much would be possible.
But it isn't enough. For one thing, it's not quite enough to get the job done. For another, I'm concerned that it won't even sustain people's interest long enough to mobilize for better legislation and industrial solutions once they see that 'something' has been passed.
2050 is a long ways away. In terms of my own timescale, I'll be 75 then. I'll be shaking my cane at the young whippersnappers who won't get off my lawn. (Not that I'd have a lawn. Very ecologically unsound. Can I suggest a nice, friendly, native plant landscaping, instead?)
I wrote about what I think is a major hidden variable in the low social capital of modern, urban populations last year when I came back from two months in a small, Costa Rican farming community. Essentially, it seems to me a problem of comparing ad hoc social networks with traditional family or geography-based social networks. It takes a long time to get to know and trust people, which is a lot harder when the population you're looking at is more likely to move house frequently and to live farther from easy proximity to family members.
But also, people's tastes in social activities are changing, which reminds me of a comment and discussion at the rural issues panel at last weekend's Yearly Kos. Bill Bishop, of the The Daily Yonder, said that Republicans had been so successful in spite of their unpopular stances because they'd adopted a social network model that was reminiscent of churches. "Stong social networks repel people who now vote Democratic," he said.
So, if you didn't know, I sold my car before moving to DC. The last time I drove was to the U-Haul place to drop off the truck. Parking is a nightmare here and it's expensive, too. I figured, hey, my new place is three blocks from a Metro station and most of the places I need to go are right on the Metro, it'll be great. That's mostly the case. Mostly.
Here's where it falls down: groceries. The full implications of that part sort of slipped my mind, it's been years and years since I needed groceries and had no car. And I was way less picky about what I ate then; lots of fast food, . It must be granted that there is a sizable grocery store only two blocks from here, and it was a selling point, so it isn't like I didn't take this into consideration at all. But it isn't a co-op, or a Whole Foods, and their selection of organic foods on top of all my allergies leaves me with slim pickings. For fruit, sometimes there are non-skeezy grapes or maybe strawberries, never very good.
Not that I'm complaining, no, really, just musing. Sometimes I do that here. It's either that, or they'd have to search me for pens before letting me use the bathroom at the local sushi bar. And I don't approve of vandalism at all, at all.
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again.... There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt...a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
--Eisenhower wrote his brother Edgar on May 2, l956, from NCrefugee in the comments
Ahem. Let me first say, as unlikely as you may be to believe me by the time you finish reading this, that I like Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). I think they mean well, but a political party cannot survive on good intentions alone. If their version of the Farm Bill, FARM 21 (HR 2720) were to be passed, we're talking Springtime for Hastert in Illinois, winter for New York and Maine.
Therefore, it's time for farm policy without pity.
Washington, D.C. - The House Agriculture Committee voted a little after 4pm ET to repeal a provision added to the 2007 Farm Bill by Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA), chair of the Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry, that would have forbidden livestock contracts from including mandatory arbitration provisions, as the majority of them now do.
During the debate on amendment number 87, proposed by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), Rogers repeatedly referred to his experience in family law. He said that mandatory arbitration clauses were like a couple agreeing to a prenuptual agreement, entered into when both parties were still calm and reasonable. He cited the possible expense of going to court as a reason to support his amendment, which included language that would force arbitration hearings to be held near where the farmer lived and that would allow small disputes to be taken to small claims court.
Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD) disagreed with drawing parallels to prenuptual agreements. She said that because of geographic concentration in the livestock industry, many producers had "no options" and "only one partner" available if they wanted to sell their livestock.
Washington, D.C. - "A sound compromise that no one is satisfied with, but nevertheless represents real reform." - From Rep. Collin Peterson's (D-MN) opening statement today on the 2007 Farm Bill.
The first House Agriculture Committee markup session on the 2007 Farm Bill began with Rep. Collin Peterson's opening statement, followed by everyone else's. Peterson said that Americans were fortunate to enjoy low, stable food prices, and food that meets the highest standards of quality and safety.
No markup, or voting on specific amendments, actually took place during today's session. The last changes to the legislation weren't made until late last night, and today was the first chance most members got to see the final versions, though Rep. Peterson said that the changes were minor in comparison to the version released a little over a week ago.
Note to would-be Farm Bill reformers everywhere: There are no U.S. Congresscritters whose constituencies include West African cotton farmers. There are no U.S. Congresscritters whose constituencies include clothing manufacturers (actually, you could almost put a period right there, they've mostly gone to China by now), garment distributors, or clothing retailers who've got even a passing desire for the price of cotton to go up. There are no U.S. Congresscritters whose constituencies could be characterized as having a broad, favorable public consensus towards furthering the goals of the World Trade Organization. This doesn't mean you can't argue against subsidies, it just means that the foregoing are always going to be weak arguments when your audience is the U.S. Congress.
Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. See what Bush and Congress really mean by a "shortage of skilled U.S. workers." Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.
I wonder how much it would cost to start an immigration attorney call center in Asia.
The Economist's latest issue, June 2nd-8th 2007, contains a 15-page special report on the business community's response to climate change. Other people may be more qualified than I to examine the articles contained within on their merits, but I can tell you for certain that as it relates to my own field of interest, their editors are clueless. Unless modern corn has figured out how to grow itself and nobody informed me.
And I quote, from page 4 of the report section, emphasis mine:
... This special report will examine how climate change is affecting business, and how business can affect climate change. It will concentrate on industrial emissions rather than on agriculture and deforestation (which produce lots of carbon dioxide without involving business much) but will leave out air travel, on which this newspaper will publish a special report in two weeks' time.
Pardon? Agriculture ... doesn't involve business much? My cranial hamster wheel wobbles on its very axis; it threatens a total derailment.
That's what terrorists want. That's what they feed on. That's how they exert control and influence, how they wield their power.
Once they've given you a reason to fear them, and it doesn't always have to be something big, they have you. They just have to make you believe they could do it. It. You know what I mean.
I know terrorists, because I used to live with one.
He didn't hit me a lot. Just a few times, really. Didn't even leave marks. But he'd fly into terrible rages that frightened me. He never had to reach for the guns he owned, never had to threaten to use them, for them to not be constantly on my mind. Because it wasn't the bare fact of his owning weapons that made him so terrifying, but his clear lack of control over his temper. His viciousness.
Avedon Carol, in a news trawl that also pointed out the shadow war between the dirty hippie bloggers and the MSM, notes that the U.S. is slipping in terms of technological innovation and has fallen to seventh in the world. The list of top seven innovators for 2006 (2005 rankings in parentheses) as reported in the BBC and measured by the World Economic Forum, who are clearly a bunch of dirty hippies themselves:
1: Denmark (3) 2: Sweden (8) 3: Singapore (2) 4: Finland (5) 5: Switzerland (9) 6: Netherlands (12) 7: US (1)
Well, great. Now let me throw a whole bunch of numbers your way. Here are the world's top 7 innovators for 2006 followed by their (population) and $GDP at the official exchange rate, as gathered by me from the CIA World Fact Book:
In 2000, the average high-school educated workers age 25–29 started out earning about $5,000 less real income and could expect slower growth in earnings than those who entered the labor force in 1970. Workers with some college started about $3,500 behind their 1970 counterparts.
