Author: Brian

Andy Himes on Poetry, and the Beginning of Voices in Wartime

We need the language of poetry and art to talk about matters of the human heart. In political debate, you can use fraud and lies, twisted statistics and warped logic, and you can still be very successful. You can use fear and false accusations as weapons. But I don’t think it’s possible to create a great poem unless you are telling the most powerful truth you know.

“Maybe market forces alone can deprive people of freedom.”

Many are picking up on an essay by NotPhil on free markets. I found it a comfortable read that exposes some of the errors we’ve made while deregulating laissez-faire bullies.

“Scholars have begun to doubt that free markets lead to freedom. They’ve correlated the extent of market regulation in a nation to the extent of human rights abuses that occur in that nation. And they’ve found that there is, in fact, a clear correlation, but it’s not the correlation they had been told to expect.

“Apparently, the freer the market, the less free the people.

“But how could this be?

“Throughout the Cold War, we were told that free markets are democratic, while anything else is authoritarian. After all, what could possibly be a better way to vote than by voting with your dollars? Is there really a reason to think that unhampered markets might hamper human rights? Surely, only government interference can deprive people of freedom.

“But maybe the word free means something different for markets than it means for people, and, maybe, markets aren’t as benevolent as we’ve been told.

“Maybe there’s a reason citizens keep demanding that their governments reign in the activities of domineering market players.”

Rep. Jay Inslee in opposition to wiretaps:

Have we forgotten what our ancestors have done in the cause of liberty? Don’t we realize there are some lines we can never cross? Don’t we realize we should never legitimize illegal violations of America’s privacy rights, which this bill does? This bill says if the telecommunication companies violated America’s privacy willfully, knowingly, knowing it was illegal, we are giving them immunity. Where is the excuse for that? We have got to know the law is our ultimate guardian of liberty, and those on this side have accused us of having a pre-9/11 mentality. Let me remind them that July 4, 1776, was pre-9/11. And heaven help us the day that those values are shucked aside at the service of fear.

There are 24 empty houses for every homeless person in America. [treehugger]

California alone uses more gas than China. [wired]

I’m surprised there’s been little research on how pet foods affect aggression or behavior!

“When we are considering how a dog is behaving, we really should be considering what is inside the stomach.”

Emmy Koeleman writes at AllAboutFeed that animal welfare studies are showing several improvements are “boosting the immune system and reducing stress.”

She also points to Professor Wouter Hendriks for his work on pet nutrition.

A study in dogs (Dodman et al. (1996)) showed that territorial aggression scores were lower (p = 0.035) for medium- and low-protein diet compared to high protein diet.

However, the effects that commercial pet foods have on pet behavior are still largely unknown.

John McCain has bounced along the hallways in Washington so many years his sense of reality and issues is as old as the walls. A conservative supporter at HuffingtonPost looks critically at McCain’s so-called Town Hall meetings and finds only staging and sloppy meandering:

In answer to a question about buying gas, the Senator typically ranges far afield and wanders (no surprise) into one of his favorite topics, Iran. “As you also know, in recent days they [the Iranians] have tested missiles which could probably, in some ways, deliver a nuclear weapon, so it’s very serious, a very serious situation. Now I believe that we are seeing a positive response from our European friends. I suggested a long time ago a League of Democracies, and it’s very clear that Russia and China, especially Russia, will veto significant measures which will impact the behavior of the Iranians. Now I regret that. And I regret some of the recent behavior that Russia has exhibited, and I will be glad to talk about that later on, including the reduction of oil supplies to Czechoslovakia after they [the Czechs] agreed with us on missile defense system, etc.”

…
John McCain says, “I think that you are right. I think that the American people are beginning to understand more clearly that this huge transfer of $700 billion a year of your money is one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history. And it is a national security issue, my friends. It is an environmental issue, clearly an economic issue. But we can’t afford this as far as our national security is concerned — that money goes — you mentioned a couple of them, Venezuela, ah, some other countries that — that are clearly not our friends, and there is compelling evidence that some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations. So it is a national security issue. And I would be glad to identify them, although the American people, whom we tend sometimes to underestimate, have figured a lot of this out.”

…
McCain adds a stunner. “The first telephones cost a thousand dollars and they were about that big! We all remember that!”

“I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that’s emerging now.” – Al Gore [MSNBC]

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates renewed his call Tuesday for more spending on U.S. diplomacy and international aid, saying the U.S. government risks “creeping militarization” of its foreign policy by focusing its resources on the Pentagon. [LATimes]

Well, Bush has no other friends or supporters.

A wind turbine can power up to 600 homes, but 600 homeowners can’t get together to own a wind turbine. Why?

Because federal law makes local ownership virtually impossible.

The federal wind tax credit of 2 cents per kilowatt-hour can be taken only against taxes on passive income. Passive income does not include wages or salary; it only counts income from investments or real estate. Most Americans do not have any passive income. Those who do have very little. Thus wind turbines are financed by a handful of firms that attract investments from a few hundred or a few thousand wealthy individuals who can use the tax incentives.

The federal wind-energy incentives — up for renewal this year — discriminate against local ownership and favor absentee ownership.

They also severely restrict the number of investors who can finance wind-energy generators.

Changing the incentives would pave the way for rural Americans to own wind turbines and for the economic benefits of wind energy to truly accrue to the host community’s advantage. It would reward self-reliance. And it would level the playing field for average citizens.

[story]

Geesh!

Just 9% of Democrats say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. About 8% of Republicans. And only 3% of independents give Congress a thumbs up.

Only 12% overall think Congress has passed legislation that’s helped their lives, while 62% say Congress has done NOTHING to improve life in America. [Rasmussen Reports]

The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture drew on the work of 700 scientists:

The causes of water scarcity are essentially identical to those of the food crisis. There are serious and extremely worrying factors that indicate water supplies are steadily being used up.

Essentially every calorie of food requires a liter of water to produce it. Thus those of us on western diets, use about 2500-3000 liters per day. [up to 800 gallons each]

A further 2.5 billion people by 2030 will mean that we have to find over 2000 more cubic kilometers of fresh water to feed them. [finding nearly 500 cubic miles of new water supplies!]

This is not any easy task given that current water usage for food production is 7500 cubic kilometers and supplies are scarce. [story]

Biopact posts are always smart and thoughtful:

Pedro Sanchez, director of the Tropical Agriculture Program of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and 2002 World Food Prize Laureate, has some interesting numbers on the unsustainable costs of food aid.

They show that the multi-billion dollar food aid industry is in a crisis because of rising costs.

But there is a very positive side to this crisis: it has now become rational and profitable to invest in local farmers…

…at last, there is a glimmer of hope that this inefficient and morally questionable [food aid] industry can be phased out.

“Grass? But it’s so boring. It’s not colorful. It doesn’t attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms, and it’s temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?”

It bugs me when news reports and pundit analysis display only a farmer and a tractor. Did Bush weasle biofuel incentives to help his friends on the farm?

Corporate control of key agrofuel feedstock

	Top corporations	Corporate control
Maize merchants (US)	Cargill, ADM	Top 3 control over 80% of US maize exports
Maize seeds (US)	Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta	Monsanto controls 41% of global market
Sugar trade (Brazil)	Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Cosan/Tereos/Sucden	Cargill is the largest shipper of raw sugar from Brazil
Palm oil trade (Global)	Wilmar, IOI, Synergy Drive, Cargill	60% of palm oil area in Malaysia is owned by corporations, only 9% is owned by individual landowners.
Soya trade (Global)	Bunge, ADM, Cargill, Dreyfus	3 companies control 80% of European crushing; 5 companies control 60% of Brazilian production
Soya seeds (global)	Monsanto, DuPont	Monsanto controls 25% of global market

At grain.org, they’re saying “Green agribusiness? Don’t be fuelled!”

This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years — a careful and even-handed analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view. – Cass Sunstein

I think this snippet reveals a bit:

Cheney said that, in his view, the Bush administration hadn’t made any mistakes, and that in 15 years everyone will have recognized that the approach taken in Iraq was the right one. One cannot base policy on the public sentiment and on opinion polls, he said.

When the president of the Press Club asked a simple, but vitriolic question about why, if this were the case, the government would order so many opinion polls, Cheney frowned.

Forty years ago, the minimum wage was nearly $10-an-hour (adjusted for inflation). The federal minimum wage will rise to $6.55 an hour in July – a quick way to starve on the street. [inequality.org]

Clip: The many tensions and similarities between the life and work of an artist and the life and work of a psychiatrist …

Comment: Precisely.

Task: Define sanity.

so easy to say pioneers are history

old wagons along Kodak sand
old arms torn by scythe
old Dickens bones

Yes. A man said he was so consumed by the spirit of God that he fell and hit his head while at a Knoxville church. He’s launched a lawsuit against Lakewind Church for $2.5 million to pay medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering….

Incisive Mike Masnick at Techdirt has a clear view of the recording industry and its focus on fear and the courts. Lyle Lovett must have a clear view too when he reveals that in two decades of making music, selling 4.6 million albums, he’s “never made a dime” from album sales.

Where’s the trouble?

The trouble is they attack.
The trouble is we attack each other.

trust random
trim to poise