03/22/2007

World War Policy

The Iraq War turned four this week.  In a few more weeks, it will have lasted longer than the Civil War, moving it into third place in the “longevity of American wars” category, behind only the Revolution and Vietnam.  When the war started, the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “The war might last six days, six weeks or six months, but I don’t think it will go that long.”  At the beginning of May 2003, George W. Bush thought the mission was accomplished and has a little dress-up party to celebrate.

A few years into the war Mr. Bush predicted that the withdrawal of troops from Iraq would be a decision left to his successor and this week, on the war’s anniversary, he boasted that American forces were on their way to stabilizing Baghdad.  At this rate, by the time he leaves office, he’ll be celebrating the successful vacuuming of Air Force One.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Pakistani General-President Pervez Musharraf, one of Mr. Bush’s allies in his GWOT (Global War on Terror) is facing spreading unrest after only eight years of dictatorial rule.  Mr. Musharraf ousted his country’s chief justice a week or so ago for opposing Mr. Musharraf’s plan to seek another five years of power.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
03/15/2007

Pardon My Skepticism

On March 5, the New York Times published a front-page story called “Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells.” Getting new oil from “played out” wells was the thrust of the piece; as the price of oil rises, it becomes worthwhile investing new money into old wells. The article also indirectly took on the “peak oil” debate.

Conventional wisdom has long held that the Earth has two trillion barrels of oil. There’s consensus that we’ve drilled, pumped and used about one trillion barrels of oil, which has led some to speculate that we will soon pass over global oil’s “peak” and demand will soon outstrip supply, if it hasn’t already.

The Times article pointed to a 2000 U.S. Geological Survey estimate that put total recoverable oil at 3.3 trillion barrels, which if true, would give us all some breathing room.
An extra trillion barrels, however, is small reason for comfort in light of a 2005 report commissioned by the Department of Energy. “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management” – commonly called “the Hirsch report” after its principle author, Robert Hirsch – predicts it will take 20 years of preparation to avoid an economic crisis caused by peak oil. At current consumption rates, it would take us only another 10 years to pass the peak of a three trillion-barrel supply.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Oil, Peak Oil | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
03/08/2007

Unbearable

“I can’t imagine a world without polar bears,” the woman said.

She was standing at a microphone in an auditorium at the Department of the Interior Monday night, delivering a comment on the Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to list the polar bear as a threatened or endangered species. The Bush FWS was not being proactive on the proposed listing; it only took action after being sued by the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The proposal lists five factors to be considered in the listing decision – habitat loss, over hunting, disease and predation, inadequacy of existing regulations and other factors. Of these, the FWS employees admitted that the overwhelming factor is loss of habitat.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
03/01/2007

Go Along, Get Along

Twenty-some years ago I was a newspaper reporter covering the courts in a rural county (population 50,000) in Western New York. People there were politically and socially conservative and had great faith in law enforcement. Defendants who went to trial were usually convicted. I remember one acquittal in four years. Defense attorneys counted themselves fortunate when their clients were allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

Although the pro-law enforcement attitude may have been pronounced in Allegany County, it was not unique for its time. The U.S. attorney general then was Edwin Meese, who said, “If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.” Given the national and local atmosphere, it was difficult to determine the competence of either prosecutors or defense attorneys. Once the police arrested someone, a conviction for something was usually forthcoming. “Go along, get along,” was the unofficial motto of the county bar association.

I imagine things are not all that different today in Windham County, Vermont (population 44,000). The national scene is, if anything, worse than it was in the 1980s. Ed Meese has given way to Alberto Gonzales. Vermont newspapers this week carried the story of a police sting operation carried out on a Windham defense attorney.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
02/22/2007

North America Goes South

I think it all goes back to NAFTA.  The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, was supposed to increase prosperity throughout the continent, instead brought economic insecurity to U.S. workers and a meltdown in Mexico.  The low-wage, assembly line jobs never got to Mexico; they left the U.S. and went skipping over the ocean to Southeast Asia.  Meanwhile, the dumping of U.S. agricultural products on the Mexican market, coupled with “agrarian reform” pushed millions of Mexicans off the land and over the border.

The stated goal of NAFTA was to raise everyone’s standards, to make Mexico more like the U.S. or Canada.  Instead, the reverse has happened and the U.S. is becoming more like the cartoon of a Latin American “banana republic.”

How?  Let’s count the ways:

1 – Economic inequality.  As union-wage, manufacturing jobs leave the U.S. for overseas, they are replaced by low-wage “service sector” jobs, which means flipping burgers or cleaning toilets.  Workers’ wages stagnate or sink, while executives who still control those factories in Bangalore or Jakarta, take home ever-higher salaries and bonuses.  The result is the end of the middle class and the emergence of an oligarchic system of the few rich and powerful and the many poor and powerless.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
02/15/2007

Skin Cell, Jail Cell

As a word person, I resent the violence politics does to the English language.  It’s been going on for decades and it gets worse all the time.  The best-known recent example is the USA Patriot Act, which in fact is a vehicle for stripping the rights away from law-abiding citizens.  A new entry to the field is last year’s Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).  While the VAWA does have some significant protections for women, it uses those protections as a cover to invade the rights of many who pose no threat to women or anyone men.

A little-debated provision allows the federal government to take a DNA sample from anyone arrested by a federal agent and place the information from that sample in a national database.

No doubt, the information contained in DNA can be a powerful tool of justice, as evidenced by the scores of people who have been released from prison – sometimes from death row – when DNA tests have shown that they did not commit the crimes they were convicted of.  Conversely, a national database of DNA may show that a person arrested for a crime in one state has committed crimes in one or more other states.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
02/08/2007

Gifts of Love

It’s crunch week for American men. Payback time for all that lounging on Super Bowl Sunday. Valentine’s Day is less than a week away.

Adrienne, bless her heart, does not expect me to take part in this bizarre mating ritual, but many men in America are expected to get out there and spend gobs of cash in a public and ostentatious way this week, to outdo the other guys in their social circle and give their wife bragging rights for a year, when the whole competition starts all over again.

I know this all sounds horribly sexist. Valentine’s should be a two-way holiday, but the reality for many Americans is that Super Bowl Sunday is his day and Valentine’s is hers. Really both days, like so many others, belong to Madison Avenue, whose advertisers try to make us feel there’s something wrong with us if we’re not buying lots of crap.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)