12/27/2007

The Gathering Storm?

In the autumn of 1979, I was a college freshman; majoring in history and watching it unfold. The Solidarity movement emerged from the shipyards of Gdansk as I arrived at school. Eight weeks later, Iranian students took staff at the US embassy in Tehran hostage. Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve.

Each event sounded in my head like a hammer against a gong. The following summer I was required to register for the draft. I was fairly sure an actual draft – and war – would be forthcoming.

They were not. My generation was spared and now I am too old to be drafted. Does that sound selfish? Is not war, and all that is associated with it, ultimately selfish? I and mine live, you and yours die – or the other way around.

This morning I woke to the news that Benazir Bhutto is dead, assassinated at a political rally days before an election that would likely have made her prime minister of Pakistan. I immediately thought, “Here we go, over the edge and into the abyss.”
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics, Oil | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
12/21/2007

Ray Carver and the SRA Box

When I was third grade at St. Margaret Mary’s School in the late 1960s, we used to have “the SRA box” in the corner. The SRA box had dozens of color-coded sheets, each sheet had a little story and a few questions at the end. We’d read a story, answer the questions, Mrs. Ortolani would grade our paper and we’d move on to the next story.

As one progressed through the colors, the stories got harder. It was a big deal to move up a color and being competitive little strivers, we were well aware of our color standing relative to our peers.

Turns out, “SRA” stands for Science Research Associates. This week’s issue of the New Yorker reports that short story writer Raymond Carver was writing for SRA at the same time I was reading.

It’s odd to think I was reading Raymond Carver in third grade and I don’t remember any stories being about a man drinking alone late in to the night as his wife periodically calls from various places to taunt, recriminate and apologize. But maybe Mrs. Ortolani put those stories aside.

By floegel | Posted in Asides | Tagged , | Comments (2)
12/20/2007

Next To Godliness

This isn’t a Christmas story, per se. It’s about soap. It takes place in Louisiana in June, far removed from the climate and symbols traditionally associated with Christmas, but the more I contemplate the “Christmas spirit” the more this story pushes to the front of my mind.

The June in question was 2001, before specific calamities befell the nation and region, but the locus of this story was – and is – in the midst of a long-running calamity. It was New Sarpy, just upriver from New Orleans. The citizens of New Sarpy are low-income African Americans. Over the years their homes have been continuously encroached upon by several oil refineries.

On that June day, Greenpeace was conducting a tour of several communities that were struggling with health effects and pollution that result from the heavy industrialization of the area. One of my colleagues asked me to help with security.

“Security” seems odd and unneeded for a group of activists escorting politicians, celebrities and journalists on a tour of poor neighborhoods, but such tours are distinctly unwelcome in those parishes of Louisiana. All day, as members of the group descended from buses onto narrow streets, we’d had to contend with white men in large pickup trucks, often adorned with confederate flags and/or gun racks, revving their engines and driving perilously close to children. The same trucks seemed to follow us from town to town.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy, Toxics | Tagged , | Comments (1)
12/14/2007

It Can’t Happen Here?

Ohio journalists Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have been charging that the way voting was conducted in their state in the 2004 presidential election was suspicious almost from the moment George W. Bush was declared winner. Winning Ohio gave Mr. Bush his second term in office.

Now a report from the Ohio Secretary of State agrees that Ohio’s ballots could easily have been manipulated.

Messrs. Fitrakis and Wasserman point out that Mr. Bush’s win over John Kerry reversed the prediction made by exit polls. In the days following the election, most mainstream media commentators blamed the discrepancy on the exit polls. Now it seems there may have been another cause.

Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure, because the records of that election were destroyed – in violation of federal law – in 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

By floegel | Posted in Asides, Civil Liberty, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
12/14/2007

Rocket Juice

I woke in the night and said, “Of course. Why else would Roger Clemens throw at Mike Piazza’s head? Why else would he throw the barrel of a broken bat at him? He was so juiced on steroids he couldn’t see straight.”

My midnight musings had no proof steroids were involved in those ugly incidents from the 2000 season games between the Yankees and the Mets, but it seems to fit.

Thursday’s report on the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball by the Mitchell commission devoted nine pages to Mr. Clemens, more than any other player received. And why not? Roger got more money, more limelight and more records than any other implicated player. Except Barry Bonds.

Now the two may be forever joined at the hips, the same hips their trainers and “friends” injected with steroids. Those hips, bulging with steroids and cash-stuffed wallets along with the rest of the bodies should be banned, now and forever, from baseball and the hall of fame.

A huge amount of blame for the sorry state of the game today rests with Commissioner Bud Selig and players union boss Donald Fehr. They were as seduced by steroids as surely as the players and they should both be out of a job. The new commissioner (bringing Fay Vincent back would be a smart move) should impose lifetime bans on players who can be reasonably shown to have been involved with steroids. That means Messrs. Bonds and Clemens, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmiero.

Why? Because that’s the only way to send the message of how serious this problem is and would indicate that organized baseball is ready, for the first time, to take it seriously. Absent a lifetime ban from the sport, all you’ll get is the kind of cat-and-mouse games we see in the Tour de France. If a player knows getting caught just once means he’s out of baseball forever, he’ll know the price is just too high.

A few years ago, Roger Clemens announced he’d be wearing a Yankees cap on his plaque in Cooperstown. Instead, that Yankees cap will forever rest above one of the marquee faces of the steroids scandal.

Even the Yankees don’t deserve that.

By floegel | Posted in Asides | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
12/13/2007

My Other Religion

This is the time of year when religion fills the air. The eight nights of Hanukkah concluded last night, Christmas is less than two weeks away and the presidential primaries are in full swing.

In years past, presidential politics and religion were as separate as… well, as church and state, but those lines get blurrier all the time. Last week, Republican hopeful Mitt Romney gave a speech defending his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints, because he thinks certain evangelical Christian sects (who have an outsized influence in GOP primaries) are suspicious of Mormons.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister is surging in the Republican polls, perhaps with the support of those evangelicals who remain unconvinced by Mr. Romney’s speech.

On the Democratic side, nasty rumors and let’s be clear – untrue rumors – have been spreading that Illinois Senator Barack Obama is Muslim. Mr. Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ, although he lived in Indonesia, a Muslim nation, for four years as a child. Let’s also be clear that there’s nothing about the Muslim faith that would disqualify any Muslim from holding our nation’s highest office.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Electoral Politics | Tagged , | Comments (0)
12/12/2007

The Hour of Power

The Washington Post today reports various utilities are experimenting with peak-hour pricing for electricity.

The utilities use “smart meters” to report energy use in 15-minute segments and e-mail and text messages to alert customers that local power use is peaking.

That’s a great idea, it’s an example of how we can use relatively unsophisticated computer programs to save power, save money and cut pollution.

Some utilities are offering power at discount rates at off-peak times, which also makes sense. Do the laundry, take a shower, dry your hair at 10 p.m. rather than 7 a.m. or 5 p.m., take advantage of efficiencies in the system and be rewarded for it. The discount would be something on the order of nine cents per kilowatt hour, instead of the normal 11 cents per kilowatt hour.

Some utilities, on the other hand, want to charge premium rates (81 cents to $1.30 per kilowatt hour) for using electricity in peak time.

This is where I lose patience with utilities. Theirs is a business that strictly adheres to the law of supply and demand. There are opportunities for efficiency and inefficiency within each utility and some people (engineers, I suspect) figure out ways to make the system work better (discounts for off-peak use). Other people (accountants, I suspect) figure out ways to gouge consumers when they’re most vulnerable (premium prices when you’re trying to get a hot breakfast into the kids).

By floegel | Posted in Asides, Economy, Energy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)