http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=91096
"The public debt increased by 178 percent between fiscal 1981 and fiscal 1989 rising from $789.4 billion to $2190.7 billion. Stated differently, when Reagan left office his eight year administration was accountable for 64 percent of all the debt incurred by this government since the beginning of the republic. The interest payments required to finance the debt created under his administration has exceeded more than $100 billion a year every year since he left office. If one calculates the compounding effect of the debt and the interest payments on the debt the cost to the Treasury thus far has been more than $3 trillion."
"During the late 1980s one of the largest financial disasters of the 20th century erupted when it became apparent that hundreds of savings and loan institutions across the country had insufficient funds to allow depositors to withdraw money from their accounts. Before it was over, U.S. taxpayers were forced to pay more than $150 billion to close and consolidate the failed institutions. While the crisis was not the result of a single factor, it is clear that a number of Reagan administration policies contributed greatly to the disaster. These included: the 1982 legislation deregulating the S & L industry and encouraging the industry to diversify, the appointment of regulators to the Home Loan Bank Board who actively encouraged the industry to engage in high risk investing; promulgation of new regulations that allowed accounting practices that concealed the extent of S & L insolvency; 1981 tax legislation creating powerful tax incentives for purchasing commercial real estate and causing dramatic inflation in real estate values; 1986 tax legislation reversing the tax advantages for real estate ownership adopted five years earlier; delay in recognizing the true scope of the problem and shutting down failed institutions before they could borrow more money and increase taxpayer liability. All of these actions were either taken as a result of legislation signed into law by the president or by regulations or regulatory actions taken by people whom he appointed."
The amount of information here leaves me dumbfounded as to where to begin: http://liberalslikechrist.org/about/Reagan.html
http://prorev.com/reagan.htm
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk." --Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980
"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal." --Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976
"The Reagan admininstration was one of the most corrupt in American history, including by one estimate 31 Reagan era convictions, including 14 because of Iran-Contra and 16 in the Department of Housing & Urban Development scandal. By comparison 40 government officials were indicted or convicted in the wake of Watergate. 47 individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine were convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes with 33 of these occurring during the Clinton administration itself. There were in addition 61 indictments or misdemeanor charges. 14 persons were imprisoned.
Using a looser standard that included resignations, David R. Simon and D. Stanley Eitzen in Elite Deviance, say that 138 appointees of the Reagan administration either resigned under an ethical cloud or were criminally indicted. Curiously Haynes Johnson uses the same figure but with a different standard in "Sleep-Walking Through History: America in the Reagan Years: "By the end of his term, 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations."
Four members of the Reagan cabinet came under criminal investiation, as compared with five in the Clinton cabinet. Three top officials of the Harding administration were in indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal."
"The claim that Reagan won the Cold War is pure rightwing propaganda. The Soviet Union had long been far weaker than many American leaders knew, or wished to acknowledge, thanks to CIA gross overestimates of its economy. The Soviet Union was brought down by a number of factors including the inherent weaknesses of dictatorship and ethnic divides that eventually forced its breakup."
William Blum: "[George Kennan], the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, and father of the theory of 'containment' of the same country, asserts that 'the suggestion that any United States administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish.' He contends that the extreme militarization of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. 'Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union.'"
http://archive.democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=Ronald%20Reagan
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Friday, April 29, 2005
The Gipper was no friend of mine
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=896
"One political commentator recently commented that “whereas Richard Nixon was blamed for everything, Ronald Reagan was blamed for nothing”. Even after he was caught lying over the Iran Contra affair. He was actually allowed to get away with the following comment: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” (He should have been removed from office for that line.--Bouncie)
"Re-elected with 52 per cent of the vote in 1970, Reagan introduced a series of welfare reforms during his second term in office. This included tightening eligibility requirements for welfare aid and requiring the able to seek work rather than receiving benefits. However, the tax cuts never came, in fact, he presided over the largest tax increase any state had ever demanded in American history."
"Reagan was elected to power with a promise to reduce public spending and to bring an end to “big government”. He did neither. He increased public spending so much that by the time he left office the United states had a national debt of $3 trillion."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1236211,00.html
"It is not surprising that the current international manoeuvring over Iraq is treated with suspicion grounded in that history. Iraqis regard their newly appointed government with scepticism. They see the difficulty France had at the United Nations in trying to persuade the Americans to allow Iraqis a veto over US offensives in places like Falluja. They note that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi did not even ask for a major Iraqi role until the French made it an issue. Iraqis remember that Allawi and his exile organisation, the Iraqi National Accord, were paid by the CIA.
Not just in Iraq but around the world, the hallmark of Reagan's presidency was anti-communist cynicism, masked by phoney rhetoric about freedom. In his first press conference as president he used quasi-biblical language to claim that Soviet leaders "reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat". It was one of the most extraordinary cases of the pot calling the kettle black. What could Saddam, let alone other Iraqis, have thought when it became known two years after Rumsfeld's first visit to Baghdad that Washington had secretly sold arms to the mullahs Iraq was fighting. Who had been lying and cheating?
In the name of anti-communism everything was possible. Reagan invaded Grenada on the false premise that US students who had been there safely for months were suddenly in danger. Reagan armed thugs to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, even after it won internationally certified free elections in 1984. He made the US an outlaw by rejecting the world court judgments against its blockade of Nicaragua's coast.
Reagan armed and trained Osama bin Laden and his followers in their Afghan jihad, and authorised the CIA to help to pay for the construction of the very tunnels in Tora Bora in which his one-time ally later successfully hid from US planes. On the grounds that Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was pro-communist, Reagan vetoed US congress bills putting sanctions on the apartheid regime the ANC was fighting."
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/22/4757
Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?
One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.
The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.
Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.
In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.
"One political commentator recently commented that “whereas Richard Nixon was blamed for everything, Ronald Reagan was blamed for nothing”. Even after he was caught lying over the Iran Contra affair. He was actually allowed to get away with the following comment: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” (He should have been removed from office for that line.--Bouncie)
"Re-elected with 52 per cent of the vote in 1970, Reagan introduced a series of welfare reforms during his second term in office. This included tightening eligibility requirements for welfare aid and requiring the able to seek work rather than receiving benefits. However, the tax cuts never came, in fact, he presided over the largest tax increase any state had ever demanded in American history."
"Reagan was elected to power with a promise to reduce public spending and to bring an end to “big government”. He did neither. He increased public spending so much that by the time he left office the United states had a national debt of $3 trillion."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1236211,00.html
"It is not surprising that the current international manoeuvring over Iraq is treated with suspicion grounded in that history. Iraqis regard their newly appointed government with scepticism. They see the difficulty France had at the United Nations in trying to persuade the Americans to allow Iraqis a veto over US offensives in places like Falluja. They note that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi did not even ask for a major Iraqi role until the French made it an issue. Iraqis remember that Allawi and his exile organisation, the Iraqi National Accord, were paid by the CIA.
Not just in Iraq but around the world, the hallmark of Reagan's presidency was anti-communist cynicism, masked by phoney rhetoric about freedom. In his first press conference as president he used quasi-biblical language to claim that Soviet leaders "reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat". It was one of the most extraordinary cases of the pot calling the kettle black. What could Saddam, let alone other Iraqis, have thought when it became known two years after Rumsfeld's first visit to Baghdad that Washington had secretly sold arms to the mullahs Iraq was fighting. Who had been lying and cheating?
In the name of anti-communism everything was possible. Reagan invaded Grenada on the false premise that US students who had been there safely for months were suddenly in danger. Reagan armed thugs to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, even after it won internationally certified free elections in 1984. He made the US an outlaw by rejecting the world court judgments against its blockade of Nicaragua's coast.
Reagan armed and trained Osama bin Laden and his followers in their Afghan jihad, and authorised the CIA to help to pay for the construction of the very tunnels in Tora Bora in which his one-time ally later successfully hid from US planes. On the grounds that Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was pro-communist, Reagan vetoed US congress bills putting sanctions on the apartheid regime the ANC was fighting."
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/22/4757
Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?
One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.
The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.
Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.
In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.
Turns out the farmer is screwing the farmer
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa135.html
The huge financial gap between farmers and nonfarmers becomes even more stark when net worth is considered. The Census Bureau concluded in 1986 that the average net worth of American households was $78,734 and that the median net worth of American households was $32,677 (meaning that equal numbers of households were worth less than and more than $32,677).[21]
In contrast, the average full-time farmer is a millionaire, with a net worth of $1,016,000 as of December 31, 1988.[22] (The net worth figure is after debts have been subtracted.) The average full-time farmer has a net worth almost 13 times greater than that of the average American family and more than 30 times greater than that of half the households of America.
Some liberals advocate continuing government aid to small farmers only, but even part-time farmers are far wealthier than the average American family. Farmers in the $40,000 to $99,999 sales class have a net worth of $426,487--more than five times that of the average American family.[23]
Although farm programs are defended as preserving the small family farmer, farm aid is distributed not according to farmers' needs but according to their net worth: to him who hath, shall be given. In 1988 the most wealthy farmers received over 100 times more in direct federal handouts than did the smallest farmers.[24] By handing big farmers $50,000, $100,000, or more each year, the federal government has provided a war chest that allows big operators to "cannibalize" little operators.
Farm programs are entitlement programs based on the idea that farmers are entitled to higher prices than their customers will pay voluntarily. If the same means test that is applied to other federal handout recipients were applied to farmers, virtually no farmer would qualify for federal aid. In the 1988 drought bill, Congress imposed a "means test," declaring that farmers with gross sales of over $2 million a year were not eligible for drought relief. A farmer with gross revenue of $2 million a year probably has a net worth far above $2 million. That is an interesting cutoff point for neediness--equivalent to a welfare department announcing that any unwed mother who owns more than 37 Cadillacs can no longer qualify for a monthly check.
The huge financial gap between farmers and nonfarmers becomes even more stark when net worth is considered. The Census Bureau concluded in 1986 that the average net worth of American households was $78,734 and that the median net worth of American households was $32,677 (meaning that equal numbers of households were worth less than and more than $32,677).[21]
In contrast, the average full-time farmer is a millionaire, with a net worth of $1,016,000 as of December 31, 1988.[22] (The net worth figure is after debts have been subtracted.) The average full-time farmer has a net worth almost 13 times greater than that of the average American family and more than 30 times greater than that of half the households of America.
Some liberals advocate continuing government aid to small farmers only, but even part-time farmers are far wealthier than the average American family. Farmers in the $40,000 to $99,999 sales class have a net worth of $426,487--more than five times that of the average American family.[23]
Although farm programs are defended as preserving the small family farmer, farm aid is distributed not according to farmers' needs but according to their net worth: to him who hath, shall be given. In 1988 the most wealthy farmers received over 100 times more in direct federal handouts than did the smallest farmers.[24] By handing big farmers $50,000, $100,000, or more each year, the federal government has provided a war chest that allows big operators to "cannibalize" little operators.
Farm programs are entitlement programs based on the idea that farmers are entitled to higher prices than their customers will pay voluntarily. If the same means test that is applied to other federal handout recipients were applied to farmers, virtually no farmer would qualify for federal aid. In the 1988 drought bill, Congress imposed a "means test," declaring that farmers with gross sales of over $2 million a year were not eligible for drought relief. A farmer with gross revenue of $2 million a year probably has a net worth far above $2 million. That is an interesting cutoff point for neediness--equivalent to a welfare department announcing that any unwed mother who owns more than 37 Cadillacs can no longer qualify for a monthly check.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Decline of the farmer
http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/TFPCommentary/cows.htm
In face of such a huge crisis, animal health specialists cannot agree on a common strategy and look on helplessly while the army carries out the culling. After six weeks, the Ministry of Agriculture put the number of confirmed cases at 875, and livestock marked for slaughter in the preventive cull stands at 940,000. The lowly farmer can but look on as his perfectly healthy herd is sent away and destroyed.
Strangely enough, England's outspoken animal rights activists who scream when a single fox is hunted down are not so vocal when a million head of livestock are slaughter wholesale.
Equally strange is the fact that regions that do not export meat tend to take the disease in stride. In Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan where foot-and-mouth is deeply rooted, no animals have been slaughtered. No restrictions have been placed on the sale of meat or ban on importing meat or dairy products from other countries with the disease, though a mere 574 pigs have died of foot-and-mouth since April 2000.
Canada's decline: http://www.opinion-canada.ca/en/articles/article_64.html
St. Charles Heritage Center: http://www.stcmuseum.org/historic14.html
During the middle 19th century, over 90% of the country’s men were farmers.
British agriculture: http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/agdecline.htm
Farm Incomes
Total income from farming (TIFF) has fallen to its lowest level since entering the Common Agricultural Policy.
In the short-term, financial pressure on farms is the result of a combination of events which have led to the very steep decline in farm incomes since 1996. Farm incomes in the UK are now as low (in real terms) as at any time in the last thirty years . Incomes have fallen by 60% since 1995 (after doubling between 1990 and 1995).
The steep fall in incomes reflects a combination of adverse factors:
An exchange rate which is high by historical standards
Weak world markets in a range of commodities
The effects of the BSE crisis, foot & mouth disease and other food scares
Great Depression decline: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_21.html
In the 1930s on the Great Plains and in Nebraska, tremendous forces came together to begin a decline in the number of farms that continues today. In 1934, Nebraska recorded 135,000 farms in the state, the highest number since European farmers began moving onto the plains. By 2001, the state had fewer than 58,000 farmers.
Census shows continuing decline in farm numbers: http://southwestfarmpress.com/mag/farming_census_shows_continuing/
Mar 4, 2004 12:00 PM
By Hembree Brandon Farm Press Editorial Staff
Preliminary data from the 2002 Census of Agriculture indicate a drop of 86,650 total farms, or 3.9 percent, from 1997 to 2002. All but eight states had fewer farms in 2002.
California had a decline of more than 8,000 farms during the period, says Rich Allen, deputy administrator of programs and products for USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, while Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa each had losses of more than 6,000.
A slight increase in Texas, with 10.7 percent of the total farms in the nation, helped to minimize the percent loss in total U.S. farms, he says. Other states that held steady or increased farm numbers were Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Oregon, and Wyoming.
Going back to 1978, the census figures show a drop of nearly 350,000 farms, Allen says, with the biggest declines in the periods 1982-1987 and 1987-1992.
The number of farms with $10,000 and above in sales, which represented nearly 50 percent of the census-adjusted numbers in 1978, has shown “a steady decline” in each subsequent census. Between 1978 and 2002, the number of farms in this sales class declined by 337,132, or 28 percent, with more than a third of that occurring between 1997 and 2002.
Farms in the $10,000 to $99,999 category declined by nearly 425,000, or 43.3 percent, during the 1978-2002 period, while farms with $100,000 or more in sales increased by 86,254, o0r 38.5 percent.
Over the past five years, the number of farms in the top sales class, $500,000 or more, increased by 404, while the $100,000 to $499,999 category declined by 41,276, or 14.8 percent.
The census showed that 20.6 percent of the reporting farms, 427,289, had two or more families sharing net farm income from an operation.
Data tables in the final census for 2002, expected to be released June 3, will include detailed summary information on farm size, types of crops grown, economic sales classes, and many other comparisons, Allen says.
“These data will present the most complete picture of American agriculture at the local level that has been possible in many years.”
A number of changes were made in the 2002 census, compared to previous years, chief among them electronic processing of all the returned forms.
The Census of Agriculture is conducted every five years to collect uniform information on all U.S. farming operations and those involved in production agriculture. It helps, Allen says, to measure changes in production areas and farming practices, as well as trends in the number and size of operations and characteristics of those involved in farming.
“It is not designed to present detailed analyses of production practices or any other aspect of agriculture,” he says. “It will never answer all inquiries about agriculture and the people in agriculture.”
http://www.epals.com/20thcentury/centstories/091899farm.tpl
The number of farms like the one begun by Johnson is shrinking, from 5.75 million in 1900 to 1.91 million today (column written in 1999). It is no longer a certainty that farm children will succeed their parents in the fields.
At the turn of the last century, most farms in this country encompassed less than 175 acres; today a typical farm is 487 acres. Meanwhile, farm employment dropped from 9.9 million in 1950 to 2.9 million in 1997. Farm population slipped below 5 million in 1990, census figures show.
His wife, LaDeen, now works off the farm as a school teacher _ a move the family was forced to make after the farm crisis of the 1980s, when some 200,000 to 300,000 farmers went bankrupt, were foreclosed or had their operations financially restructured. High-interest debt on upgraded machinery and expanded acreage overwhelmed farmers hit by falling land values and low commodity prices.
http://www.hpn.org/beyond/ref311.html
Problem and Components
Policy issue area: Economics
Policy issue: Agriculture
Description: Careless policies of the Federal government are depressing many parts of rural America, causing the loss of large numbers of family farms and associated jobs.
Symptoms: Since 1981 750,000 farms went out of business; 1 million jobs in the rural economy are lost; many more small farmers are threatened with the loss of their farms; extensive psychological damage is caused to many by stress and worry; agribusiness conglomerates damage the soil and groundwater by excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides.
Causes: Government subsidies are being cut, while costs of production are rising; administration policies favor agribusiness and food processor conglomerates; Department of Agriculture policies are no longer supportive of small farmers.
Cost of problem: -
Solution and Components
Resources: Agricultural research institutes; Federal and state governments; family farmers.
Goal:
1. Save existing family farms, as a valuable component of American society and source of traditional values
2. Encourage young people to reenter farming as a means of production and a way of life.
Program area: Rural development
Program-remedy:
1. Adopt a Family Farm Act, to help the small farmer
2. Institute a policy of fair prices and supply management of agricultural products
3. Negotiate international trade agreements that will help the marketing of agricultural products at fair prices
4. Create new programs designed to keep land in the possession of families (including debt moratoriums) and encourage the entrance of new families to farming
5. Develop diversification of crops and new markets for farm products.
Program-prevent:
1. Revise tax system and subsidies so that policies do not favor agribusinesses, tax sheltering, speculation, and other actions that harm the family farm
2. Link farm policy to the monetary and agricultural production environment, both national and global
3. Increase worldwide demand by raising standard of living of the developing nations.
Cost of program: -
Beneficiaries: Family farmers; small rural businesses serving farmers.
Historical highlights: http://www.nass.usda.gov/census/census02/volume1/us/st99_1_001_001.pdf
In face of such a huge crisis, animal health specialists cannot agree on a common strategy and look on helplessly while the army carries out the culling. After six weeks, the Ministry of Agriculture put the number of confirmed cases at 875, and livestock marked for slaughter in the preventive cull stands at 940,000. The lowly farmer can but look on as his perfectly healthy herd is sent away and destroyed.
Strangely enough, England's outspoken animal rights activists who scream when a single fox is hunted down are not so vocal when a million head of livestock are slaughter wholesale.
Equally strange is the fact that regions that do not export meat tend to take the disease in stride. In Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan where foot-and-mouth is deeply rooted, no animals have been slaughtered. No restrictions have been placed on the sale of meat or ban on importing meat or dairy products from other countries with the disease, though a mere 574 pigs have died of foot-and-mouth since April 2000.
Canada's decline: http://www.opinion-canada.ca/en/articles/article_64.html
St. Charles Heritage Center: http://www.stcmuseum.org/historic14.html
During the middle 19th century, over 90% of the country’s men were farmers.
British agriculture: http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/agdecline.htm
Farm Incomes
Total income from farming (TIFF) has fallen to its lowest level since entering the Common Agricultural Policy.
In the short-term, financial pressure on farms is the result of a combination of events which have led to the very steep decline in farm incomes since 1996. Farm incomes in the UK are now as low (in real terms) as at any time in the last thirty years . Incomes have fallen by 60% since 1995 (after doubling between 1990 and 1995).
The steep fall in incomes reflects a combination of adverse factors:
An exchange rate which is high by historical standards
Weak world markets in a range of commodities
The effects of the BSE crisis, foot & mouth disease and other food scares
Great Depression decline: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_21.html
In the 1930s on the Great Plains and in Nebraska, tremendous forces came together to begin a decline in the number of farms that continues today. In 1934, Nebraska recorded 135,000 farms in the state, the highest number since European farmers began moving onto the plains. By 2001, the state had fewer than 58,000 farmers.
Census shows continuing decline in farm numbers: http://southwestfarmpress.com/mag/farming_census_shows_continuing/
Mar 4, 2004 12:00 PM
By Hembree Brandon Farm Press Editorial Staff
Preliminary data from the 2002 Census of Agriculture indicate a drop of 86,650 total farms, or 3.9 percent, from 1997 to 2002. All but eight states had fewer farms in 2002.
California had a decline of more than 8,000 farms during the period, says Rich Allen, deputy administrator of programs and products for USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, while Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa each had losses of more than 6,000.
A slight increase in Texas, with 10.7 percent of the total farms in the nation, helped to minimize the percent loss in total U.S. farms, he says. Other states that held steady or increased farm numbers were Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Oregon, and Wyoming.
Going back to 1978, the census figures show a drop of nearly 350,000 farms, Allen says, with the biggest declines in the periods 1982-1987 and 1987-1992.
The number of farms with $10,000 and above in sales, which represented nearly 50 percent of the census-adjusted numbers in 1978, has shown “a steady decline” in each subsequent census. Between 1978 and 2002, the number of farms in this sales class declined by 337,132, or 28 percent, with more than a third of that occurring between 1997 and 2002.
Farms in the $10,000 to $99,999 category declined by nearly 425,000, or 43.3 percent, during the 1978-2002 period, while farms with $100,000 or more in sales increased by 86,254, o0r 38.5 percent.
Over the past five years, the number of farms in the top sales class, $500,000 or more, increased by 404, while the $100,000 to $499,999 category declined by 41,276, or 14.8 percent.
The census showed that 20.6 percent of the reporting farms, 427,289, had two or more families sharing net farm income from an operation.
Data tables in the final census for 2002, expected to be released June 3, will include detailed summary information on farm size, types of crops grown, economic sales classes, and many other comparisons, Allen says.
“These data will present the most complete picture of American agriculture at the local level that has been possible in many years.”
A number of changes were made in the 2002 census, compared to previous years, chief among them electronic processing of all the returned forms.
The Census of Agriculture is conducted every five years to collect uniform information on all U.S. farming operations and those involved in production agriculture. It helps, Allen says, to measure changes in production areas and farming practices, as well as trends in the number and size of operations and characteristics of those involved in farming.
“It is not designed to present detailed analyses of production practices or any other aspect of agriculture,” he says. “It will never answer all inquiries about agriculture and the people in agriculture.”
http://www.epals.com/20thcentury/centstories/091899farm.tpl
The number of farms like the one begun by Johnson is shrinking, from 5.75 million in 1900 to 1.91 million today (column written in 1999). It is no longer a certainty that farm children will succeed their parents in the fields.
At the turn of the last century, most farms in this country encompassed less than 175 acres; today a typical farm is 487 acres. Meanwhile, farm employment dropped from 9.9 million in 1950 to 2.9 million in 1997. Farm population slipped below 5 million in 1990, census figures show.
His wife, LaDeen, now works off the farm as a school teacher _ a move the family was forced to make after the farm crisis of the 1980s, when some 200,000 to 300,000 farmers went bankrupt, were foreclosed or had their operations financially restructured. High-interest debt on upgraded machinery and expanded acreage overwhelmed farmers hit by falling land values and low commodity prices.
http://www.hpn.org/beyond/ref311.html
Problem and Components
Policy issue area: Economics
Policy issue: Agriculture
Description: Careless policies of the Federal government are depressing many parts of rural America, causing the loss of large numbers of family farms and associated jobs.
Symptoms: Since 1981 750,000 farms went out of business; 1 million jobs in the rural economy are lost; many more small farmers are threatened with the loss of their farms; extensive psychological damage is caused to many by stress and worry; agribusiness conglomerates damage the soil and groundwater by excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides.
Causes: Government subsidies are being cut, while costs of production are rising; administration policies favor agribusiness and food processor conglomerates; Department of Agriculture policies are no longer supportive of small farmers.
Cost of problem: -
Solution and Components
Resources: Agricultural research institutes; Federal and state governments; family farmers.
Goal:
1. Save existing family farms, as a valuable component of American society and source of traditional values
2. Encourage young people to reenter farming as a means of production and a way of life.
Program area: Rural development
Program-remedy:
1. Adopt a Family Farm Act, to help the small farmer
2. Institute a policy of fair prices and supply management of agricultural products
3. Negotiate international trade agreements that will help the marketing of agricultural products at fair prices
4. Create new programs designed to keep land in the possession of families (including debt moratoriums) and encourage the entrance of new families to farming
5. Develop diversification of crops and new markets for farm products.
Program-prevent:
1. Revise tax system and subsidies so that policies do not favor agribusinesses, tax sheltering, speculation, and other actions that harm the family farm
2. Link farm policy to the monetary and agricultural production environment, both national and global
3. Increase worldwide demand by raising standard of living of the developing nations.
Cost of program: -
Beneficiaries: Family farmers; small rural businesses serving farmers.
Historical highlights: http://www.nass.usda.gov/census/census02/volume1/us/st99_1_001_001.pdf
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Never being wrong in political debate
My frustration with political debate, namely "conservatives," goes back to a message board I use to be a member of. One of the last replies I received was that "opinion pieces" are not factual and therefore not valid. This is completely correct. However, I have come to the conclusion that incriminating evidence on to an Administration rarely ever sticks. Nixon was one of the very few to step out of office. Evidence now from a conservative author suggests that those impeached charges were trumped up by the Democrats to put one of their own back in office.
So if I cannot conspire to my own conclusions after looking at what information is available, what can I do? I hope those that make these statements from one side of the fence will also allow the same freedoms with the politics from the other side.
What I'm trying to say is I have to presume to a certain extent that any administration in office is going to set up "meetings" behind closed doors that shut out the general publics knowledge of. The best I can do is see who is providing the more detailed arguments which includes not looking at the two-party system so black & white, us vs. them. The further I step outside the sphere the more I cannot reside in any given party because it becomes trading off of attacks. The same attacks that are nearly parallel in even though one party claims the other is only doing the misdeeding when in fact they are doing nearly the same thing.
I started out on this blog thinking that it seems conservatives have more corruption on liberals, and therefore I am center-right of the political equation. This is becoming less the case. What I'm tired of is the peachy picture either party portrays when common sense says it doesn't matter what party is in office. They both favor special interests before people interests.
In later posts I hope to focus on Reagan's "legacy" without linking to "opinion" pieces. In the meantime here are a couple on how our current Administration isn't the "religiousity" our President portrays.
Bush lies I
Bush lies II
So if I cannot conspire to my own conclusions after looking at what information is available, what can I do? I hope those that make these statements from one side of the fence will also allow the same freedoms with the politics from the other side.
What I'm trying to say is I have to presume to a certain extent that any administration in office is going to set up "meetings" behind closed doors that shut out the general publics knowledge of. The best I can do is see who is providing the more detailed arguments which includes not looking at the two-party system so black & white, us vs. them. The further I step outside the sphere the more I cannot reside in any given party because it becomes trading off of attacks. The same attacks that are nearly parallel in even though one party claims the other is only doing the misdeeding when in fact they are doing nearly the same thing.
I started out on this blog thinking that it seems conservatives have more corruption on liberals, and therefore I am center-right of the political equation. This is becoming less the case. What I'm tired of is the peachy picture either party portrays when common sense says it doesn't matter what party is in office. They both favor special interests before people interests.
In later posts I hope to focus on Reagan's "legacy" without linking to "opinion" pieces. In the meantime here are a couple on how our current Administration isn't the "religiousity" our President portrays.
Bush lies I
Bush lies II
Sunday, March 27, 2005
More from "Bush Versus the Environment"
p. 89-91:
The Bush Administration has used such legal strategies so often that observers have coined a term for it: "sue and settle." Strictly speaking, the term alludes to cases in which an aggreviated party sues the federal government and the Administration, despite having a strong case, agrees to a sweetheart settlement that gives that party what it wants. But broadly speaking, the term also encompasses other forms of courtroom capitulation on the part of the government, such as simply mounting little or no defense, as in the case of the Roadless Rule, or not appealing a strong case to a higher court, again, as in the Roadless Rule.
Often the sue-and-settle approach has the disorienting effect of pitting the Administration against its own agencies and experts. Take the case of the California red-legged frog, once the Golden State's most abundant frog and likely the title character in Mark Twain's short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Largely a victim of urban sprawl and the concomitant draining of wetlands, the frog landed on the threatened list under the Endangered Species Act in 1996, by which time it had been eliminated from more than 70 percent of its historic range. In order to protect the frog, in March 2001 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees endangered species matters, declared 4.1 million acres in California to be "critical habitat." This means that any company or person seeking to build on or otherwise develop a portion of that critical habitat must first convince Fish and Wildlife that the development won't drive the frog closer to extinction or impede its recovery. Though critical habitat designation doesn't prevent development, many home builders detest it because it may cut into their profits by keeping them away from certain coveted wetlands, making them build fewer homes on a given piece of land, or forcing them to buy land elsewhere to mitigate the damage they do where they're building.
In June of that same year business interests led by the Home Builders Association of Northern California sued the government, largely on the basis that Fish and Wildlife had underestimated the economic impact of protecting the frog. (It's worth noting this argument, since opponents repeatedly and mistakenly criticize the Endangered Species Act for not taking economics into account. As the Home Builders' suit demonstrates, the act does indeed consider the economic costs of protecting species. It does so when critical habitat is designated--after which actual economic harm may occur--and not at the time a species is put on the list, which in itself carries no economic burden.) In 2002, after closed-door meetings between the Administration and the business interests that had bought the lawsuit (conservationist lawyers asked to be included but were refused), the Administration settled. It agreed to slash the amount of protected habitat from 4.1 million acres to 200,000 acres and those 200,000 acres were public lands that couldn't be developed anyway. Quoted in a story in the San Jose Mercury News before the Administration's deal with the plaintiffs, Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Pat Foulk had said, "We stand by our science. We don't think it's going to create the level of hardship the plaintiffs have indicated." But instead of defending its own agency's position, the White House thrust aside the studies and expertise of the Fish and Wildlife Service and sided with industry.
As Administration officials are quick to point out, other presidents have used settlements, both for and against environmental interests. But the current Bush Administration has carried the practice to new heights--or depths, depending on one's point of view. This White House uses sue-and-settle techniques more frequently than its predecessors, often to decide cases of immense magnitude, which wasn't common under past administrations. Vital environmental policy is being decided behind closed doors in settlements between the Administration and industry, policy that many critics think should be debated fairly and decided openly. Citing 11 cases that came up during the first 16 months of the Bush White House, a report from the office of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says, "If these cases of representative of DOJ's [Department of Justice's] current approach on environmental laws, it sends a dangerous message to environmental opponents. It tells them that if they do not like an environmental law or regulation, rather than challenge it in a public legislative or regulatory forum, they should sue. The failure to appeal just the cases in this report alone leaves far-reaching decisions on the books that reinterpret core legal principles..."
p. 94-95:
These cases typify the Administration's record. Tellingly, among the many such cases I examined, the Administration always sued and settled in a way that favored industry. I didn't find a single example in which a matter dear to corporate interests was undercut by a weak defense (when a strong defense was available) or a pro-environment settlement that the Administration had negotiated in closed-door mettings attended only by environmentalists.
Perhaps more than any other issue, the designation of wilderness is being profoundly altered by the Administration's sue-and-settle machinations. This comes as no suprise when you consider the pro-development resumes of Bush himself, Vice President Cheney, and many of the President's appointees. Timber companies, real-estate developers, and other business interests may chafe under regulations that restrict their activities, but they particularly abhor wilderness. These industries need land, and a wilderness designation goes beyond restricting them to shut them out almost entirely. Energy companies, ever popular with this Administration, have an especially big stake in preventing the establishment of additional wilderness. Oil and gas outfits cover BLM [Bureal of Land Management] lands, and of the BLM's 264 million acres only about 6.5 million acres--about 2.5 percent--currently are protected as wilderness. But millions of additional acres have been identified as potential wilderness, and some of the White House's most problematic sue-and-settle actions have been aimed at not realizing that potential.
p.99-100:
The fact that settlements can be larded with policy provisions that stray from the original lawsuit is just on of the attractions of the sue-and-settle approach. Settlements also enable the Administration and the plaintiffs to keep everyone else in the dark while decisions are being hammered out. Often citizens and environmental groups don't hear about a settlement until it is done. Even when the public interest attorneys get wind of an impending settlement they're usually shout out of the process; not only does the Administration refuse to let them participate in the talks but in many cases the Administration won't provide documents or even reveal when it and the plaintiffs are meeting. When conservation groups seek documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), frequently the Administration stonewalls, ignoring the 20-day deadline because they know they'll get a slap on the wrist. Late in August 2003, the Wilderness Society and Earthjustice brought suit against the Department of the Interior, accusing it of illegally withholding documents regarding the settlement deal it had made behind closed doors. At the time of this writing, the Wilderness Society had been waiting for nearly eight months and had received an inadequate response from Interior. In other wilderness cases conservation groups likewise have been left empty-handed and have had to resort to lawsuits to try to get documents from the Interior Department concerning agreements made behind closed doors.
There's an even more basic reason that the Administration finds settlements attractive. "If these cases got litigated," said Angell, "industry would have little chance of winning on the merits of the claim. If they settle, and basically the government gives them what they want, it's harder to overturn." It's difficult for citizens and public interest groups to object to a settlement, as they have few levers. Courts have a strong inclination to approve settlements and move on to the rest of their crowded dockets. From the judges' point of view a settlement means that the two opposition parties have agreed to a solution, so why rock the boat? Sometimes courts will scrutinize a settlement to determine how well it serves the public interest and occasionally they'll disapprove a settlement on those grounds, but the default position is approval.
p.101-103:
Many advocates of unfettered development insist that we already have enough wilderness in America. After all, Congress already has designated 662 wilderness areas encompassing 106 million acres. But a closer lookat the numbers reveals a different story. [b]A bit more than half of those protected wild acres sprawl across Alaska; only about 2 percent of the lower 48 has been designated wilderness. According to the Wilderness Society, 75 percent of the lower 48's 2 percent is scenic but often harsh and relatively unproductive desert and mountain country. And that 75 percent is not very diverse, representing only a small portion of the nation's eco-regions. In terms of both quantiy and quality, then, America doesn't have much land left, especially biologically diverse land, that hasn't felt the touch of industrial society. The Wilderness Society calculates that only 200 million or fewer acres remain that may be suitable for wilderness, and that number is constantly dwindling. And the amount of untamed land will shrink rapidly if the Bush Administration succeeds in its anti-wilderness sue-and-settle campaign.
Does it matter if we never designate another acre of wilderness in the United States? Critics portray wilderness as nothing more than the playground of an elite minority of white-wine-sipping, Eddie Bauer-clad environmentalists. These critics would say that 106 million acres--even given the caveats noted above--are more than enough. Advocates would retort we don't have enough wilderness, that we need wilderness more than additional oil wells or outlet shopping malls. These advocates would state that the image of wilderness as a playground for the eilite is a propoganda sterotype. They also would say that "playground" is a misleading word because the wilderness experience often goes beyond ordinary recreation and engages visitors on a more profound level. Hearing the howl of a wolf pierce the night while you're sleeping under the stars stirs primeval feelings, deeply meaningful feelings that you don't get from everyday outdoor pastimes like riding bikes or pitching horseshoes in the park. Advocates also would say that wild places have intrinsic worth apart from any service they provide for humankind.
Hardheaded critics [Rush Limbaugh --4Seasons] who scoff at the notion of intrinsic worth or deeply meaningful primeval feelings may find the practical ecological value of wetlands and water more compelling. Entire books recently have been written expounding on this rapidly expanding body of knowledge, so I can't begin to do the topic justic in this space. But here's a short list of services provided by wilderness and other undeveloped and less developed areas: forests help stabilize the climate by sequestering carbon dioxide; wildernesses serve as reservoirs for genetic diversity of plants and animals; healthy estuaries serve as breeding and rearing waters for many commercial fish species; undeveloped land maintain soil productivity; intact forests help control floods; and unspoiled wetlands help purify drinking water.
p. 107:
Speaking of the pending nominees who have made dubious remarks, William Haynes II deserves special mention. Picked by Bush to sit on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Haynes currently serves as the Defense Department's top lawyer. In a 2002 case in which conservationists sued the Defense Department over the bombing of an island important to nesting migratory birds, Haynes and his defense team argued that nature lovers actually benefit when the bombs kill birds because it makes the surviving birds less common and "bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one." Does it suprise you that Haynes lost this case?
p. 170:
Reacting to the [Henry] Waxman report in an interview with The New York Times, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, "This Administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people. The only one who is playing politics about science is Congressman Waxman. His report is riddled with distortion, inaccuracies, and omissions." Waxman indeed may enjoy the political points scored by his report, but its many examples and details can't be dismissed so easily. I repeatedly contacted McClellan's office, as well as two other White House offices, to ask for more information about the "distortion, inaccuracies, and omissions" and to find out what sources McClellan used. After talking to a number of baffled staffers, I finally was told that McClellan go his information from the EPA. So I called over there and asked the same questions. "Huh?" was the gist of its response. It seems that McClellan offered a knee-jerk denial with no data to back it up. Not very scientific of him. In developing its campaign, the Union of Concerned Scientists evaluated many of the Waxman Report's claims and found every one that they examined to be solid.
p. 175-76:
...Even if all polluters adhered to religiously to those non-binding goals, Administration projections show that while the "intensity" would decline, the actual tonnage of greenhouse gas pollution produced in the U.S. would rise by 14 percent over the next ten years, just as it did in the previous ten years. Undeterred by this information, the White House produced a fact sheet claiming that even though Bush had shunned the Kyoto agreement, the President's "emission intensity" plan would achieve much the same result, reducing America's greenhouse gas pollution to 7 percent below 1990 levels by2012--the Kyoto target accepted by other industrialized nations that signed the treaty. But in reality the Administration's plan would lead to emissions 30 percent higher than 1990 amounts. In December of 2002, after launching all this "emissions intensity" business, the White House pulled out another favorite tool for those who want to bury inconvenient science: delay by study. Despite many years and hundreds of peer-reviewed studies showing ample agreement abou the essentials of global warning, the Administration insisted that it must study the matter for another ten years before taking significant action.
As if trying to hide an elephant in the living room by throwing a slipcover over it, the Administration has repeatedly has attempted to conceal the reality of global warming in environmental reports. This game started when an EPA-led task force published a report, in May 2002, that laid out a scientifically accurate view of globalwarming. The Administration stuck the report into the nether regions of EPA's Web site, but it soon slipped out. Industry and its allies howled. Bush sprinted away from the report, dismissing it as some blather "put out by the bureaucracy." Christie Whitman, then EPA Administrator, claime3d that she hadn't known about the report until she read about it in a newspaper. All this drowning of the report looked disingenuous when the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group, released documents that told a different story--Bush officials had been closely following the report for months prior to slipping it deep into EPA's Web site. A few days after NRDC's revelations, Bush reversed field again and said. through spokesman Ari Fleischer, that now he stood behind the report. But Fleischer added that, somehow, the report didn't contradict the Administration's basic position downplaying global warming.
Perhaps because they'd been burned by the May 2002 EPA report, the Administration didn't take half measures with the next report on global warming. In September 2002, EPA released its annual report on air pollution, which for the previous six years had included a section on global warming. This time, rather than tuck this incendiary information into an obscure corner of the annual report as in the handling of the May document, Bush's EPA appointees completely cut it out.
p. 180:
The Administration's suppression of information extends beyond America's borders, too. Due to a variety of environmental problems, Yellowstone National Park had been listed by the United Nations' World Heritage Committee as an imperiled site that needed international attention. Paul Hoffman, Deputy Interior Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, asked the committee to take Yellowstone off the list, citing a Park Service report that showed, according to Hoffman, that "Yellowstone is no longer in danger." In a familiar pattern, the draft of the report, written by park staff, mentioned numerous problems, but Interior deleted discussions of those concerns in the version it sent to the U.N. hesitated to remove Yellowstone from the list. Finally, it did take the park off the at-risk list, but only after requiring that the U.S. keep the U.N. abreast of those ongoing environmental threats in Yellowstone and requesting that independent scientists and organizations participate in those periodic assessments. Apparently the U.N. didn't trust the Administration to provide unvarnished data.
It begs the question why Yellowstone or any other *keystone* National Park would be taken off the watch list. By taking them off the list, what they are in effect saying is the parks are no longer monumental heritages. They are just like any other piece of land that is not on the watch list. That basically, whatever. I have a feeling loosening Nat'l Park restrictions without one iota of historical thought is one example of the core of the problem in America. Here's my solution. Let the pro-industry have their way with much of the American landscape outside of our National Park's. Their record in time will speak for itself. But the NP's are the one area of land that Nature is above humans. Because time and time again it has become so obvious that when humanity and Nature collides, Nature loses. Our National Park's being taken off the at-risk list? Think about it. It baffles me. It should also be noted that after having visited message boards on National Park websites, the things tourists are continally saying is that while they had a wonderful experience, the parks are overcrowded, over commercialized, and not enough attention is paid to what is an acceptable amount of tourist interaction. --4Seasons
p.188-89:
"You need to be even more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view, and much more active in making them part of your message." Does this sound like advice that guided HHS Secretary Thompson in making his appointments to the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention? Well, it just may be, at least indirectly. The quote comes from Frank Luntz and the Luntz Research Companies, whom we met in the introduction. He's the Republican pollster and "message developer" (his term) who helped craft the Contract with America and who, more recently, wrote a memo laying out a public relations strategy that Republicans could use the spruce up their image on environmental issues. (The memo appeals mainly to antiregulatory, economically conservative Republicans, not to all Republicans and certainly not to the moderate Republicans who place a high value on federal environmental protections.) As noted in the first chapter, the Luntz memo has been very influential. These days you can't swing a stick without hitting a Bush official or the President himself giving a speech on the environment that bristles with "balance," "common sense," "accountable," and other market-tested words and ideas recommended by Luntz.
It's not suprising that the role of science in environmental issues gets the Luntz treatment. Luntz's marketing research revealed what any observer of environmental debates already knew: the perception of what the science says about an issue exerts enormous influence on citizens' attitudes toward that issue. As the Luntz memo puts it, "People are willing to trust scientists, engineers, and other leading research professionals." Toward the end of the memo, Luntz includes a model speech on the environment to serve as a template for antiregulatory rhetoric. In it he includes four key statements that he urges GOP politicians to use while speechifying, on of which is, "New regulations should be based on the most advanced and credible scientific knowledge available."
This is of course a fine sentiment with which no one would disagree publicly, but it is also a principle from which the President and many of his appointees routinely stray. When introducing his global warming plans in 2002, Bush said, "When we make decisions, we want to make sure we do so on sound science; not what sounds good, but what is real." But earlier in this chapter we saw some of the many ways in which the Administration has mistreated science in the global warming debate. Thousands of scientists have reached a consensus regarding some basic aspects of climate change, yet the Administration instead empahsizes the findings of a handful of dissenting researchers and information provided by corporations that stand to lose money if greenhouse gases are regulated. Clearly, the President is not basing decisions on the "most advanced and credible scientific knowledge available" nor using "sound science." The Bush subscribes--perhaps literally--to Luntz's propaganda approach to science, in which image triumphs over "what is real." Perhaps I should put this in Luntz parlance: When Bush and Administration officials alter or suppress information or present only one side of scientific discussion, they are behaving in a manner that runs counter to the goal of "balance." When confronted with such deceptive practices, "common sense" tells citizens that they should hold the President and his appointees "accountable." If this mistreatment of science continues and environmental policy drifts away from its scientific moorings, the natural world and human health also will be set a drift.
p. 214-15:
Advocates of cost-benefit analysis employ a number of methods to determine the dollar value of environmental and human health benefits. Alan Krupnick, Senior Fellow and Director of the Quality of the Environment division at a think tank called Resources for the Future, says that it's possible to put a price tag on more things than you'd think. "Sometimes there are clever ways of teasing our people's preferences of reducing their risk of having health effects or risk to the environment," says Krupnick. One common and representative method is called "willingness to pay" or "WTP." Researchers survey citizens to determine just how much they'd pay for a particular environmental good. In one famous example people on average said that they'd spend $257 per household to save bald eagles from extinction.
WTP and its kin generate considerable controversy, however. For example, critics worry that WTP researchers tend to reject responses from people whose comments don't fit neatly into the survey's approach, especially those people--"skeptics"--who question some of the survey's premises. For practical reasons surveys can't allow respondents to think outside the box: "They just have to put up or shut up," says Krupnick. A reputable practitioner like Krupnick will try to accomodate some of the skeptics' objections while developing the survey, but not all WTP surveyors do this. Critics also question the very foundation of WTP.
Continued on p. 216-17:
WTP also reveals a fundamental inconsistency in the attitudes of the promoters of cost-benefit analysis. On the one hand, WTP calls on ordinary citizens to make dauntingly sophisicated calculations, calculations that become keystones in the cost-benefit edifice. On the one hand, much of the impetus for the development of cost-benefit analysis stems from the expert analysts' deep mistrust of ordinary citizens. Many cost-benefit proponents believe that the public approaches environmental regulation in an uninformed , overly emotional way. (A favorite adjective is "hysterical.") This ignorant fear, according to the analysts, then gets incorporated into regulaory policy via Congress, a political body that bends to the will of the mob instead of following the scientific path the experts lay out. So which is it? Are you and I analytical geniuses or "paranoid" (a word Graham has applied to the public) ignoramuses? That sounds like a rhetorical question, but it's not. Except in the cases of WTP studies and their ilk, many cost-benefit practitioners consider regular folks "irrational."
Then there's WTA. Before I explain the acronym, let me pose two hypotheticals that Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas, uses on his students every year. One: You get a glass of water. There's a one in a thousand chance that it contains a poison that will rapidly and painlessly kill you. McGarity has an antidote that he's willing to sell you. How much will you pay to allay that one in a thousand chance of death? That's WTP, willingness to pay. Two: You get a glass of water. There's a one in a thousand chance that it contains a poison that will rapidly and painlessly kill you. How much would McGarity have to pay you to drink that water and take that one in a thousand chance of dying? That's WTA, willingness to accept. "I promise you," says McGarity, "the amount is always much, much higher when it's a question of how much it would cost to get my students to accept the risk rather than how much they'd pay to get rid of the risk."
McGarity has another question, not hypothetical: "Why do econimists always use [in cost-benefit calculations] willingness to pay instead of willingness to accept, even though they all acknowledge that either can be seen as valid? Answering his own question, he says, "Because they want the number to be low," thus holding down the benefit side of the equation. McGarity says that cost-benefit practitioners don't like WTA because it tends to elicit what they see as unreal responses, such as someone asserting that it'd take $10,000 to convince him to accept the death of a bald eagle, as opposed to the $257 an average person theoretically is willing to pay to prevent that bird's death. In most economists' view a rational person couldn't possibly believe that an eagle's life is worth $10,000, ergo that person is irrational and any valuation technique that allows such irrational input isn't valid. Cynically, I must add that some practitioners likely stick to WTP and its much lower benefit figures simply because it caters to their vested interests. Mc Garity believes that the technical issues of WTP versus WTA reveals profoundly different views of environmental protection. "I would agree," he says, "that if you use willingness to pay as the measure, you're saying that the world is such a place that people can destroy our resources willy-nilly as long as we can't pay them enough to stop. Whereas, if you use willingnes to accept as the measure of these more or less priceless things, then you're saying that we live in the kind of society in which we have a right to clean air, clean water, etc., unless someone convinces us--pays us, if you want to call it that--but at least convinces us that it ought to be destroyed. Basically, in using willingness to pay, they are subtly forcing upon us a view of the world that says that development can proceed unless you persuade us to stop, which is exactly the opposite of how most people think of the world."
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Book excerpt
Chapter One
The Fox Is Guarding the Henhouse
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush offered clues as to how he would deal with the environment. In his speeches he said nice things about cleaning up pollution and protecting wildlife and supporting parks, even going so far as to make some specific promises (several of which he broke soon after assuming office). But people who looked beneath his words and heeded the old Watergate adage-follow the money-quickly saw where Bush's loyalties lay. The trail of campaign dollars led to big corporations and powerful industries, many of which will lose a lot of money if the federal government does a better job of protecting the environment, and will make a lot of money if the government weakens certain environmental regulations. The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group, took the campaign contribution data compiled by the Federal Election Commission and coded it by industry. Using that coded information, Public Campaign, a progressive public interest group, and Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, figured out how much money the various industries affected by environmental regulation had given to which politicians and political parties. Mining, timber, chemical and other manufacturing, oil and gas, and coal-burning utilities together contributed a staggering $44.1 million to the Bush-Cheney campaign and to the Republican National Committee.
Public Citizen and Earthjustice then did something even more interesting. They took the industry-by-industry breakdown of campaign contributions and compared it with the environmental policies undertaken by the Administration during Bush's first 18 months as president. For example, the timber industry gave $3.4 million and the Administration introduced and pushed an initiative designed in part to open up more federal lands to logging. In another example, the coal-burning utilities gave $2 million and the Administration has made regulatory changes and has not enforced existing laws so that these utilities can avoid the expense of installing the most effective pollution-control technology.
Global Journalist
In evaluating the environmental record of any U.S. administration, journalists must try to separate factual criticism from political advantage. So, are the critics mostly members of the Democratic Party and trashing Bush because of partisanship? No, Devine concludes. He backs his conclusions with interviews, personal visits to sites of environmental contention and extensive use of documents, including federal agency studies, Congressional hearings and reports by scientists from around the globe.
On the other hand, Devine thinks the critics of the Bush Administration go too far when they say the President and his appointees are opposed to clean air and clean water.
I'd guess that Bush and his appointees would be perfectly happy to have clean water, clean air, abundant wildlife, lush forests and plenty of wilderness, Devine says. I don't think they would mind keeping species from going extinct, stopping harmful chemicals from being used as pesticides, arresting global warming and preventing pollution from killing people. Yes, they would say, these are nice things. Nice, but not important.
As journalists try to ferret out the truth about environmental policies and practices, Devine suggests they look for balance: We do need raw materials. We do need industry. We do need places upon which to build homes and human communities. We do need to live with some pollution. ... So the trick is to find ways to meet the needs on both sides of the equation in a manner that can be sustained indefinitely. ... The debate is about the balance.
The Bush Administration has used such legal strategies so often that observers have coined a term for it: "sue and settle." Strictly speaking, the term alludes to cases in which an aggreviated party sues the federal government and the Administration, despite having a strong case, agrees to a sweetheart settlement that gives that party what it wants. But broadly speaking, the term also encompasses other forms of courtroom capitulation on the part of the government, such as simply mounting little or no defense, as in the case of the Roadless Rule, or not appealing a strong case to a higher court, again, as in the Roadless Rule.
Often the sue-and-settle approach has the disorienting effect of pitting the Administration against its own agencies and experts. Take the case of the California red-legged frog, once the Golden State's most abundant frog and likely the title character in Mark Twain's short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Largely a victim of urban sprawl and the concomitant draining of wetlands, the frog landed on the threatened list under the Endangered Species Act in 1996, by which time it had been eliminated from more than 70 percent of its historic range. In order to protect the frog, in March 2001 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees endangered species matters, declared 4.1 million acres in California to be "critical habitat." This means that any company or person seeking to build on or otherwise develop a portion of that critical habitat must first convince Fish and Wildlife that the development won't drive the frog closer to extinction or impede its recovery. Though critical habitat designation doesn't prevent development, many home builders detest it because it may cut into their profits by keeping them away from certain coveted wetlands, making them build fewer homes on a given piece of land, or forcing them to buy land elsewhere to mitigate the damage they do where they're building.
In June of that same year business interests led by the Home Builders Association of Northern California sued the government, largely on the basis that Fish and Wildlife had underestimated the economic impact of protecting the frog. (It's worth noting this argument, since opponents repeatedly and mistakenly criticize the Endangered Species Act for not taking economics into account. As the Home Builders' suit demonstrates, the act does indeed consider the economic costs of protecting species. It does so when critical habitat is designated--after which actual economic harm may occur--and not at the time a species is put on the list, which in itself carries no economic burden.) In 2002, after closed-door meetings between the Administration and the business interests that had bought the lawsuit (conservationist lawyers asked to be included but were refused), the Administration settled. It agreed to slash the amount of protected habitat from 4.1 million acres to 200,000 acres and those 200,000 acres were public lands that couldn't be developed anyway. Quoted in a story in the San Jose Mercury News before the Administration's deal with the plaintiffs, Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Pat Foulk had said, "We stand by our science. We don't think it's going to create the level of hardship the plaintiffs have indicated." But instead of defending its own agency's position, the White House thrust aside the studies and expertise of the Fish and Wildlife Service and sided with industry.
As Administration officials are quick to point out, other presidents have used settlements, both for and against environmental interests. But the current Bush Administration has carried the practice to new heights--or depths, depending on one's point of view. This White House uses sue-and-settle techniques more frequently than its predecessors, often to decide cases of immense magnitude, which wasn't common under past administrations. Vital environmental policy is being decided behind closed doors in settlements between the Administration and industry, policy that many critics think should be debated fairly and decided openly. Citing 11 cases that came up during the first 16 months of the Bush White House, a report from the office of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says, "If these cases of representative of DOJ's [Department of Justice's] current approach on environmental laws, it sends a dangerous message to environmental opponents. It tells them that if they do not like an environmental law or regulation, rather than challenge it in a public legislative or regulatory forum, they should sue. The failure to appeal just the cases in this report alone leaves far-reaching decisions on the books that reinterpret core legal principles..."
p. 94-95:
These cases typify the Administration's record. Tellingly, among the many such cases I examined, the Administration always sued and settled in a way that favored industry. I didn't find a single example in which a matter dear to corporate interests was undercut by a weak defense (when a strong defense was available) or a pro-environment settlement that the Administration had negotiated in closed-door mettings attended only by environmentalists.
Perhaps more than any other issue, the designation of wilderness is being profoundly altered by the Administration's sue-and-settle machinations. This comes as no suprise when you consider the pro-development resumes of Bush himself, Vice President Cheney, and many of the President's appointees. Timber companies, real-estate developers, and other business interests may chafe under regulations that restrict their activities, but they particularly abhor wilderness. These industries need land, and a wilderness designation goes beyond restricting them to shut them out almost entirely. Energy companies, ever popular with this Administration, have an especially big stake in preventing the establishment of additional wilderness. Oil and gas outfits cover BLM [Bureal of Land Management] lands, and of the BLM's 264 million acres only about 6.5 million acres--about 2.5 percent--currently are protected as wilderness. But millions of additional acres have been identified as potential wilderness, and some of the White House's most problematic sue-and-settle actions have been aimed at not realizing that potential.
p.99-100:
The fact that settlements can be larded with policy provisions that stray from the original lawsuit is just on of the attractions of the sue-and-settle approach. Settlements also enable the Administration and the plaintiffs to keep everyone else in the dark while decisions are being hammered out. Often citizens and environmental groups don't hear about a settlement until it is done. Even when the public interest attorneys get wind of an impending settlement they're usually shout out of the process; not only does the Administration refuse to let them participate in the talks but in many cases the Administration won't provide documents or even reveal when it and the plaintiffs are meeting. When conservation groups seek documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), frequently the Administration stonewalls, ignoring the 20-day deadline because they know they'll get a slap on the wrist. Late in August 2003, the Wilderness Society and Earthjustice brought suit against the Department of the Interior, accusing it of illegally withholding documents regarding the settlement deal it had made behind closed doors. At the time of this writing, the Wilderness Society had been waiting for nearly eight months and had received an inadequate response from Interior. In other wilderness cases conservation groups likewise have been left empty-handed and have had to resort to lawsuits to try to get documents from the Interior Department concerning agreements made behind closed doors.
There's an even more basic reason that the Administration finds settlements attractive. "If these cases got litigated," said Angell, "industry would have little chance of winning on the merits of the claim. If they settle, and basically the government gives them what they want, it's harder to overturn." It's difficult for citizens and public interest groups to object to a settlement, as they have few levers. Courts have a strong inclination to approve settlements and move on to the rest of their crowded dockets. From the judges' point of view a settlement means that the two opposition parties have agreed to a solution, so why rock the boat? Sometimes courts will scrutinize a settlement to determine how well it serves the public interest and occasionally they'll disapprove a settlement on those grounds, but the default position is approval.
p.101-103:
Many advocates of unfettered development insist that we already have enough wilderness in America. After all, Congress already has designated 662 wilderness areas encompassing 106 million acres. But a closer lookat the numbers reveals a different story. [b]A bit more than half of those protected wild acres sprawl across Alaska; only about 2 percent of the lower 48 has been designated wilderness. According to the Wilderness Society, 75 percent of the lower 48's 2 percent is scenic but often harsh and relatively unproductive desert and mountain country. And that 75 percent is not very diverse, representing only a small portion of the nation's eco-regions. In terms of both quantiy and quality, then, America doesn't have much land left, especially biologically diverse land, that hasn't felt the touch of industrial society. The Wilderness Society calculates that only 200 million or fewer acres remain that may be suitable for wilderness, and that number is constantly dwindling. And the amount of untamed land will shrink rapidly if the Bush Administration succeeds in its anti-wilderness sue-and-settle campaign.
Does it matter if we never designate another acre of wilderness in the United States? Critics portray wilderness as nothing more than the playground of an elite minority of white-wine-sipping, Eddie Bauer-clad environmentalists. These critics would say that 106 million acres--even given the caveats noted above--are more than enough. Advocates would retort we don't have enough wilderness, that we need wilderness more than additional oil wells or outlet shopping malls. These advocates would state that the image of wilderness as a playground for the eilite is a propoganda sterotype. They also would say that "playground" is a misleading word because the wilderness experience often goes beyond ordinary recreation and engages visitors on a more profound level. Hearing the howl of a wolf pierce the night while you're sleeping under the stars stirs primeval feelings, deeply meaningful feelings that you don't get from everyday outdoor pastimes like riding bikes or pitching horseshoes in the park. Advocates also would say that wild places have intrinsic worth apart from any service they provide for humankind.
Hardheaded critics [Rush Limbaugh --4Seasons] who scoff at the notion of intrinsic worth or deeply meaningful primeval feelings may find the practical ecological value of wetlands and water more compelling. Entire books recently have been written expounding on this rapidly expanding body of knowledge, so I can't begin to do the topic justic in this space. But here's a short list of services provided by wilderness and other undeveloped and less developed areas: forests help stabilize the climate by sequestering carbon dioxide; wildernesses serve as reservoirs for genetic diversity of plants and animals; healthy estuaries serve as breeding and rearing waters for many commercial fish species; undeveloped land maintain soil productivity; intact forests help control floods; and unspoiled wetlands help purify drinking water.
p. 107:
Speaking of the pending nominees who have made dubious remarks, William Haynes II deserves special mention. Picked by Bush to sit on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Haynes currently serves as the Defense Department's top lawyer. In a 2002 case in which conservationists sued the Defense Department over the bombing of an island important to nesting migratory birds, Haynes and his defense team argued that nature lovers actually benefit when the bombs kill birds because it makes the surviving birds less common and "bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one." Does it suprise you that Haynes lost this case?
p. 170:
Reacting to the [Henry] Waxman report in an interview with The New York Times, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, "This Administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people. The only one who is playing politics about science is Congressman Waxman. His report is riddled with distortion, inaccuracies, and omissions." Waxman indeed may enjoy the political points scored by his report, but its many examples and details can't be dismissed so easily. I repeatedly contacted McClellan's office, as well as two other White House offices, to ask for more information about the "distortion, inaccuracies, and omissions" and to find out what sources McClellan used. After talking to a number of baffled staffers, I finally was told that McClellan go his information from the EPA. So I called over there and asked the same questions. "Huh?" was the gist of its response. It seems that McClellan offered a knee-jerk denial with no data to back it up. Not very scientific of him. In developing its campaign, the Union of Concerned Scientists evaluated many of the Waxman Report's claims and found every one that they examined to be solid.
p. 175-76:
...Even if all polluters adhered to religiously to those non-binding goals, Administration projections show that while the "intensity" would decline, the actual tonnage of greenhouse gas pollution produced in the U.S. would rise by 14 percent over the next ten years, just as it did in the previous ten years. Undeterred by this information, the White House produced a fact sheet claiming that even though Bush had shunned the Kyoto agreement, the President's "emission intensity" plan would achieve much the same result, reducing America's greenhouse gas pollution to 7 percent below 1990 levels by2012--the Kyoto target accepted by other industrialized nations that signed the treaty. But in reality the Administration's plan would lead to emissions 30 percent higher than 1990 amounts. In December of 2002, after launching all this "emissions intensity" business, the White House pulled out another favorite tool for those who want to bury inconvenient science: delay by study. Despite many years and hundreds of peer-reviewed studies showing ample agreement abou the essentials of global warning, the Administration insisted that it must study the matter for another ten years before taking significant action.
As if trying to hide an elephant in the living room by throwing a slipcover over it, the Administration has repeatedly has attempted to conceal the reality of global warming in environmental reports. This game started when an EPA-led task force published a report, in May 2002, that laid out a scientifically accurate view of globalwarming. The Administration stuck the report into the nether regions of EPA's Web site, but it soon slipped out. Industry and its allies howled. Bush sprinted away from the report, dismissing it as some blather "put out by the bureaucracy." Christie Whitman, then EPA Administrator, claime3d that she hadn't known about the report until she read about it in a newspaper. All this drowning of the report looked disingenuous when the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group, released documents that told a different story--Bush officials had been closely following the report for months prior to slipping it deep into EPA's Web site. A few days after NRDC's revelations, Bush reversed field again and said. through spokesman Ari Fleischer, that now he stood behind the report. But Fleischer added that, somehow, the report didn't contradict the Administration's basic position downplaying global warming.
Perhaps because they'd been burned by the May 2002 EPA report, the Administration didn't take half measures with the next report on global warming. In September 2002, EPA released its annual report on air pollution, which for the previous six years had included a section on global warming. This time, rather than tuck this incendiary information into an obscure corner of the annual report as in the handling of the May document, Bush's EPA appointees completely cut it out.
p. 180:
The Administration's suppression of information extends beyond America's borders, too. Due to a variety of environmental problems, Yellowstone National Park had been listed by the United Nations' World Heritage Committee as an imperiled site that needed international attention. Paul Hoffman, Deputy Interior Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, asked the committee to take Yellowstone off the list, citing a Park Service report that showed, according to Hoffman, that "Yellowstone is no longer in danger." In a familiar pattern, the draft of the report, written by park staff, mentioned numerous problems, but Interior deleted discussions of those concerns in the version it sent to the U.N. hesitated to remove Yellowstone from the list. Finally, it did take the park off the at-risk list, but only after requiring that the U.S. keep the U.N. abreast of those ongoing environmental threats in Yellowstone and requesting that independent scientists and organizations participate in those periodic assessments. Apparently the U.N. didn't trust the Administration to provide unvarnished data.
It begs the question why Yellowstone or any other *keystone* National Park would be taken off the watch list. By taking them off the list, what they are in effect saying is the parks are no longer monumental heritages. They are just like any other piece of land that is not on the watch list. That basically, whatever. I have a feeling loosening Nat'l Park restrictions without one iota of historical thought is one example of the core of the problem in America. Here's my solution. Let the pro-industry have their way with much of the American landscape outside of our National Park's. Their record in time will speak for itself. But the NP's are the one area of land that Nature is above humans. Because time and time again it has become so obvious that when humanity and Nature collides, Nature loses. Our National Park's being taken off the at-risk list? Think about it. It baffles me. It should also be noted that after having visited message boards on National Park websites, the things tourists are continally saying is that while they had a wonderful experience, the parks are overcrowded, over commercialized, and not enough attention is paid to what is an acceptable amount of tourist interaction. --4Seasons
p.188-89:
"You need to be even more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view, and much more active in making them part of your message." Does this sound like advice that guided HHS Secretary Thompson in making his appointments to the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention? Well, it just may be, at least indirectly. The quote comes from Frank Luntz and the Luntz Research Companies, whom we met in the introduction. He's the Republican pollster and "message developer" (his term) who helped craft the Contract with America and who, more recently, wrote a memo laying out a public relations strategy that Republicans could use the spruce up their image on environmental issues. (The memo appeals mainly to antiregulatory, economically conservative Republicans, not to all Republicans and certainly not to the moderate Republicans who place a high value on federal environmental protections.) As noted in the first chapter, the Luntz memo has been very influential. These days you can't swing a stick without hitting a Bush official or the President himself giving a speech on the environment that bristles with "balance," "common sense," "accountable," and other market-tested words and ideas recommended by Luntz.
It's not suprising that the role of science in environmental issues gets the Luntz treatment. Luntz's marketing research revealed what any observer of environmental debates already knew: the perception of what the science says about an issue exerts enormous influence on citizens' attitudes toward that issue. As the Luntz memo puts it, "People are willing to trust scientists, engineers, and other leading research professionals." Toward the end of the memo, Luntz includes a model speech on the environment to serve as a template for antiregulatory rhetoric. In it he includes four key statements that he urges GOP politicians to use while speechifying, on of which is, "New regulations should be based on the most advanced and credible scientific knowledge available."
This is of course a fine sentiment with which no one would disagree publicly, but it is also a principle from which the President and many of his appointees routinely stray. When introducing his global warming plans in 2002, Bush said, "When we make decisions, we want to make sure we do so on sound science; not what sounds good, but what is real." But earlier in this chapter we saw some of the many ways in which the Administration has mistreated science in the global warming debate. Thousands of scientists have reached a consensus regarding some basic aspects of climate change, yet the Administration instead empahsizes the findings of a handful of dissenting researchers and information provided by corporations that stand to lose money if greenhouse gases are regulated. Clearly, the President is not basing decisions on the "most advanced and credible scientific knowledge available" nor using "sound science." The Bush subscribes--perhaps literally--to Luntz's propaganda approach to science, in which image triumphs over "what is real." Perhaps I should put this in Luntz parlance: When Bush and Administration officials alter or suppress information or present only one side of scientific discussion, they are behaving in a manner that runs counter to the goal of "balance." When confronted with such deceptive practices, "common sense" tells citizens that they should hold the President and his appointees "accountable." If this mistreatment of science continues and environmental policy drifts away from its scientific moorings, the natural world and human health also will be set a drift.
p. 214-15:
Advocates of cost-benefit analysis employ a number of methods to determine the dollar value of environmental and human health benefits. Alan Krupnick, Senior Fellow and Director of the Quality of the Environment division at a think tank called Resources for the Future, says that it's possible to put a price tag on more things than you'd think. "Sometimes there are clever ways of teasing our people's preferences of reducing their risk of having health effects or risk to the environment," says Krupnick. One common and representative method is called "willingness to pay" or "WTP." Researchers survey citizens to determine just how much they'd pay for a particular environmental good. In one famous example people on average said that they'd spend $257 per household to save bald eagles from extinction.
WTP and its kin generate considerable controversy, however. For example, critics worry that WTP researchers tend to reject responses from people whose comments don't fit neatly into the survey's approach, especially those people--"skeptics"--who question some of the survey's premises. For practical reasons surveys can't allow respondents to think outside the box: "They just have to put up or shut up," says Krupnick. A reputable practitioner like Krupnick will try to accomodate some of the skeptics' objections while developing the survey, but not all WTP surveyors do this. Critics also question the very foundation of WTP.
Continued on p. 216-17:
WTP also reveals a fundamental inconsistency in the attitudes of the promoters of cost-benefit analysis. On the one hand, WTP calls on ordinary citizens to make dauntingly sophisicated calculations, calculations that become keystones in the cost-benefit edifice. On the one hand, much of the impetus for the development of cost-benefit analysis stems from the expert analysts' deep mistrust of ordinary citizens. Many cost-benefit proponents believe that the public approaches environmental regulation in an uninformed , overly emotional way. (A favorite adjective is "hysterical.") This ignorant fear, according to the analysts, then gets incorporated into regulaory policy via Congress, a political body that bends to the will of the mob instead of following the scientific path the experts lay out. So which is it? Are you and I analytical geniuses or "paranoid" (a word Graham has applied to the public) ignoramuses? That sounds like a rhetorical question, but it's not. Except in the cases of WTP studies and their ilk, many cost-benefit practitioners consider regular folks "irrational."
Then there's WTA. Before I explain the acronym, let me pose two hypotheticals that Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas, uses on his students every year. One: You get a glass of water. There's a one in a thousand chance that it contains a poison that will rapidly and painlessly kill you. McGarity has an antidote that he's willing to sell you. How much will you pay to allay that one in a thousand chance of death? That's WTP, willingness to pay. Two: You get a glass of water. There's a one in a thousand chance that it contains a poison that will rapidly and painlessly kill you. How much would McGarity have to pay you to drink that water and take that one in a thousand chance of dying? That's WTA, willingness to accept. "I promise you," says McGarity, "the amount is always much, much higher when it's a question of how much it would cost to get my students to accept the risk rather than how much they'd pay to get rid of the risk."
McGarity has another question, not hypothetical: "Why do econimists always use [in cost-benefit calculations] willingness to pay instead of willingness to accept, even though they all acknowledge that either can be seen as valid? Answering his own question, he says, "Because they want the number to be low," thus holding down the benefit side of the equation. McGarity says that cost-benefit practitioners don't like WTA because it tends to elicit what they see as unreal responses, such as someone asserting that it'd take $10,000 to convince him to accept the death of a bald eagle, as opposed to the $257 an average person theoretically is willing to pay to prevent that bird's death. In most economists' view a rational person couldn't possibly believe that an eagle's life is worth $10,000, ergo that person is irrational and any valuation technique that allows such irrational input isn't valid. Cynically, I must add that some practitioners likely stick to WTP and its much lower benefit figures simply because it caters to their vested interests. Mc Garity believes that the technical issues of WTP versus WTA reveals profoundly different views of environmental protection. "I would agree," he says, "that if you use willingness to pay as the measure, you're saying that the world is such a place that people can destroy our resources willy-nilly as long as we can't pay them enough to stop. Whereas, if you use willingnes to accept as the measure of these more or less priceless things, then you're saying that we live in the kind of society in which we have a right to clean air, clean water, etc., unless someone convinces us--pays us, if you want to call it that--but at least convinces us that it ought to be destroyed. Basically, in using willingness to pay, they are subtly forcing upon us a view of the world that says that development can proceed unless you persuade us to stop, which is exactly the opposite of how most people think of the world."
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Book excerpt
Chapter One
The Fox Is Guarding the Henhouse
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush offered clues as to how he would deal with the environment. In his speeches he said nice things about cleaning up pollution and protecting wildlife and supporting parks, even going so far as to make some specific promises (several of which he broke soon after assuming office). But people who looked beneath his words and heeded the old Watergate adage-follow the money-quickly saw where Bush's loyalties lay. The trail of campaign dollars led to big corporations and powerful industries, many of which will lose a lot of money if the federal government does a better job of protecting the environment, and will make a lot of money if the government weakens certain environmental regulations. The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group, took the campaign contribution data compiled by the Federal Election Commission and coded it by industry. Using that coded information, Public Campaign, a progressive public interest group, and Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, figured out how much money the various industries affected by environmental regulation had given to which politicians and political parties. Mining, timber, chemical and other manufacturing, oil and gas, and coal-burning utilities together contributed a staggering $44.1 million to the Bush-Cheney campaign and to the Republican National Committee.
Public Citizen and Earthjustice then did something even more interesting. They took the industry-by-industry breakdown of campaign contributions and compared it with the environmental policies undertaken by the Administration during Bush's first 18 months as president. For example, the timber industry gave $3.4 million and the Administration introduced and pushed an initiative designed in part to open up more federal lands to logging. In another example, the coal-burning utilities gave $2 million and the Administration has made regulatory changes and has not enforced existing laws so that these utilities can avoid the expense of installing the most effective pollution-control technology.
Global Journalist
In evaluating the environmental record of any U.S. administration, journalists must try to separate factual criticism from political advantage. So, are the critics mostly members of the Democratic Party and trashing Bush because of partisanship? No, Devine concludes. He backs his conclusions with interviews, personal visits to sites of environmental contention and extensive use of documents, including federal agency studies, Congressional hearings and reports by scientists from around the globe.
On the other hand, Devine thinks the critics of the Bush Administration go too far when they say the President and his appointees are opposed to clean air and clean water.
I'd guess that Bush and his appointees would be perfectly happy to have clean water, clean air, abundant wildlife, lush forests and plenty of wilderness, Devine says. I don't think they would mind keeping species from going extinct, stopping harmful chemicals from being used as pesticides, arresting global warming and preventing pollution from killing people. Yes, they would say, these are nice things. Nice, but not important.
As journalists try to ferret out the truth about environmental policies and practices, Devine suggests they look for balance: We do need raw materials. We do need industry. We do need places upon which to build homes and human communities. We do need to live with some pollution. ... So the trick is to find ways to meet the needs on both sides of the equation in a manner that can be sustained indefinitely. ... The debate is about the balance.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Bush's "discretionary" spending not so discretionary
Fact Check
"That's an average annual growth rate of 2.4% during Clinton's eight years, compared to an average of 11.8% during Bush's first three."
"Discretionary spending -- meaning spending that is subject to annual legislative appropriations, as opposed to spending for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare -- actually grew only 5.6% in Clinton 's last budget year (fiscal year 2001, which began October 1, 2000 ).
Since then discretionary spending has not "steadily declined" as the President said, but has gone up. In fact, the growth has been much faster than under Clinton . In the first year for which President Bush signed the spending bills discretionary spending growth soared to 13.1%, and annual growth remained in double digits through the current fiscal year."
"That's an average annual growth rate of 2.4% during Clinton's eight years, compared to an average of 11.8% during Bush's first three."
"Discretionary spending -- meaning spending that is subject to annual legislative appropriations, as opposed to spending for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare -- actually grew only 5.6% in Clinton 's last budget year (fiscal year 2001, which began October 1, 2000 ).
Since then discretionary spending has not "steadily declined" as the President said, but has gone up. In fact, the growth has been much faster than under Clinton . In the first year for which President Bush signed the spending bills discretionary spending growth soared to 13.1%, and annual growth remained in double digits through the current fiscal year."
Friday, February 18, 2005
Logging
Kettlerange
Pacific Biodiversity Institute studied the actual occurrence of fire, in constrast to that reported in hyped-up media and government reports. In an August 31, 2000 press release, Peter Morrison, Director of PBI noted, "Under natural circumstances, fire acted 'like a gardener that determined what grows in the garden.... It [fire] keeps these ecosystems as vibrant, healthy ecosystems.... Without fire, it's like a person who never cleans up their room, never sweeps its, never takes the garbage out, never does any of that.... It's not a very healthy place to live." (Morrison in McClure, 2000).
Pacific Biodiversity Institute studies showed that in states with some of the biggest fires in 2000, less than one tenth of the blazes occurred where tree thinning operations advocated by the timber industry would be practical. Much of the burned land was actually in grasslands or places with few to no trees, rather than not in timber. (McClure, 2000). Using advanced satellite imaging, federal fire data, and computer mapping systems, PBI scientifically analyzed the location, size, land ownership, forest type and management history of five of the largest fires, as well as reviewing regional fire patterns over the last century.
The report by Pacific Biodiversity Institute (Assessment of Summer 2000 Wildfires: Landscape History, Current Condition and Ownership) found that most of the forested area which burned was managed timberland, not pristine old growth. Contrary to timber industry rhetoric about logging to prevent fires, most of the forests which burned this year had already been logged. This is proof that logging doesn't prevent forest fires. The report shows that the arguments for salvage logging are self-serving attempts to exploit emotions and human tragedy for corporate profit. The facts simply don't support the political rhetoric.
Additionally the report found:
-Only 38% of the acres burned in 2000 were in roadless or wilderness areas.
- Most fires neither originated in, nor were confined to roadless area, demonstrating the hollowness of attacks on roadless area protection.
- Analysis of five of the largest fires (Valley/Skalkaho (MT), Kate's Basin (WY), Canyon Ferry (MT), Burgdorf Junction (ID), and Clear Creek (ID)) confirms the west-wide pattern: 36% of area was non-forested, 57% was in naturally high intensity burn forest types, only 8% occurred in naturally cool burning forest types. Most of the acres were in roaded, managed forests.
- The acres burned in 2000 were well below the century's average. The 6.4 million acres burned thus far is much less than the 13.9 million acre average from 1916 to 1999. Over 7 million acres have burned in 1988 and 1963, over 50 million acres burned in 1930 and 1931. Large regional fire years are the norm, not the exception.
"The timber industry and its supporters claim this is an extreme fire season [year 2000], but they are ignoring some very basic facts," said Peter Morrison of the Pacific Biodiversity Institute. "This year is really not all that extreme. In fact it is really well below the average for the last 84 years. This year severe fires have been burning in roaded and heavily managed landscapes near where people live. So this has been an intense year for them, but massive logging programs aren't the solution their problem."
"When the smoke clears, the claims of logging advocates are revealed to be hot air," said Mitch Friedman, Executive Director of Northwest Ecosystem Alliance. "If the American people didn't already know that you can't save a forest by cutting it down, the proof has now emerged from the flames themselves."
"Logging is the problem, not the answer," said Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It is disgusting to see politicians exploit human tragedy to in order to help an industry that has already done so much damage to our forests. We need to base forest policy on facts, not heat of the moment rhetoric."
Sequoia Monument
Forests Report
NPS
What Nat'l Park visitors are saying
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Strategic Ignorance (by Carl Pope AND Paul Rauber) continued
I'd like to thank again Paul Rauber and Co. over at the Sierra Club for allowing me to post pieces from the book, and I apologize for not having Paul's name down as co-author as well.
p.85-88, from Breaking with the Clean Air Consensus:
Bush cast his lot with Cheney and the power industry on February 14, 2002, when he announced his new air pollution plan with the Orwellian title "Clear Skies." Bush promised, "We will cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent from current levels. We will cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 67 percent. And, for the first time ever, we will cap emissions of mercury, cutting them by 69 percent."
While those numbers sound impressive, they actually represent a major retreat (the books emphasis) from existing requirements. Bush's numbers ignore cleanups already required and under way; rather, they compare his plan with pollution levels that would exist if every grandfathered power plant and refinery in the country simply ignored the Clean Air Act. Clear Skies eliminates the current requirement that every industrial facility clean up, and postpones standards for meeting public health goals by nearly 25 years. Instead, it proposes a series of national "caps" on how much pollution power plants, overall, can emit. This means that, as long as the national caps are being met, communities near Southern's Bowen and Scherer plants can continue to breathe polluted air for decades, perhaps forever.
Clear Skies also coddles emitters of toxic mercury. Under a current consent decree, mercury emissions from power plants have to be reduced by up to 90 percent by December 2007. Clear Skies, however, does not require any mercury reductions until 2010; even by 2018 there would still be more toxic mercury raining down on our rivers and lakes than current law would allow in 2007. Even that was not enough for Republican Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who tried to raise the "acceptable" levels of mercury pollution in Clear Skies from 26 tons of mercury per year to 34 tons. In January 2003, the implications of the laxness came into much sharper focus, when, after six months of stalling, the EPA reluctantly reported that 8 percent of American women of childbearing age carry potentially toxic levels of mercury in their bodies.
An immediate effect of the Bush plan was the resignation of the EPA's head of regulatory enforcement, Eric Schaeffer. A career EPA official and former staffer to Republican Representative Claudine Schneider, Schaeffer said that he had finally given up fighting "a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce." Schaeffer was particularly alarmed about Clear Skies' effect on the nine lawsuits filed in the last year of the Clinton administration against power companies that had flouted the Clean Air Act. "The companies named in our lawsuits emit an incredible 5 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year," Schaeffer wrote, "a quarter of the emissions in the entire country." The EPA had already negotiated settlements with four power companies, "yet today we seem about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory." Previously negotiated settlements were falling apart, he said, and "other companies with whom we were close to settlement walked away from the table. ...We have filed no new lawsuits against the utility companies since this Administration took office. We obviously cannot settle cases with defendants who think we are still rewriting the law."
In July 2003, it was discovered that for months the EPA had been withholding from Congress its own analysis showing that proposals by moderate Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) would be more effective than Clear Skies in reducing pollutants--and only marginally more expensive. A leaked memo obtained by the Washington Post showed that, by 2020, the Carper plan (which was cosponsored by two Republican senators) "would result in 17,800 fewer premature deaths from power-plant air pollution than would Clear Skies. That would save $140 billion a year in health benefits--about $50 billion more than Clear Skies." This information, however, was withheld from Senator Carper. "All we're interested in is having a full and honest debate so we can make a well-informed decision, he later told the Post. "I don't believe that's too much to ask."
A full and honest debate, however, was not what Bush's EPA had in mind. The New York Times described a meeting at which EPA air programs czar Jeffrey Holmstead was briefed by career staff on the merits of the competing pollution reduction plan: "At a meeting on May 2, employees who attend it said, Mr. Holmstead of the E.P.A. wondered aloud, 'How can we justify Clear Skies if this gets out?'" Even the OIRA risk wizards could not help to justify Clear Skies. A major OIRA study showed that the economic benefits of tougher clean air regulations implemented by the Clinton administration were five to seven times greater than the costs, for a net economic gain to American society of at least $100 billion. John Graham released the report with the terse comment, "The data shows that the EPA's clean-air office has issued some highly beneficial rules." Highly beneficial, but apparently not beneficial enough to warrant keeping.
Ultimately, the EPA stopped worrying about justifying Clear Skies and simply eliminated the existing requirements. Instead of making plants modernize whenever they made substantial changes, the agency specified that clean up was required only if 20 percent of the total cost of a plant was spent at one time--a level that is almost never reached in upgrading an old facility. California's legislature promptly rejected application of the new rules to plants within its jurisdiction; eastern states that were victims of pollution from upwind states did not have that option.
A few months later, in November 2003, Schaeffer's nightmare came true: the EPA announced that it was going to drop investigations of 50 power plants for past violations of the Clean Air Act. This meant that the weakened rules were going to be applied retroactively as well, not only increasing pollution in the future but excusing it in the past. The EPA discouraged its staff from discussing this unprecedented decision to grant power plants a retroactive waiver of the law. On the same day the agency abandoned its cases, it also warned employees in the finest terms not to communicate with members of Congress, the press, or the public about this change--using as its excuse the need to preserve secrecy while prosecuting wrongdoers--even though it had decided to abandon the prosecution!
The New York Times reported that "the change grew out of a recommendation by Vice President Dick Cheney's task force... Representatives of the utility industry have been among President Bush's biggest campaign donors, and a change in the enforcement policies has been a top priority of the industry's lobbyists."
p.85-88, from Breaking with the Clean Air Consensus:
Bush cast his lot with Cheney and the power industry on February 14, 2002, when he announced his new air pollution plan with the Orwellian title "Clear Skies." Bush promised, "We will cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent from current levels. We will cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 67 percent. And, for the first time ever, we will cap emissions of mercury, cutting them by 69 percent."
While those numbers sound impressive, they actually represent a major retreat (the books emphasis) from existing requirements. Bush's numbers ignore cleanups already required and under way; rather, they compare his plan with pollution levels that would exist if every grandfathered power plant and refinery in the country simply ignored the Clean Air Act. Clear Skies eliminates the current requirement that every industrial facility clean up, and postpones standards for meeting public health goals by nearly 25 years. Instead, it proposes a series of national "caps" on how much pollution power plants, overall, can emit. This means that, as long as the national caps are being met, communities near Southern's Bowen and Scherer plants can continue to breathe polluted air for decades, perhaps forever.
Clear Skies also coddles emitters of toxic mercury. Under a current consent decree, mercury emissions from power plants have to be reduced by up to 90 percent by December 2007. Clear Skies, however, does not require any mercury reductions until 2010; even by 2018 there would still be more toxic mercury raining down on our rivers and lakes than current law would allow in 2007. Even that was not enough for Republican Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who tried to raise the "acceptable" levels of mercury pollution in Clear Skies from 26 tons of mercury per year to 34 tons. In January 2003, the implications of the laxness came into much sharper focus, when, after six months of stalling, the EPA reluctantly reported that 8 percent of American women of childbearing age carry potentially toxic levels of mercury in their bodies.
An immediate effect of the Bush plan was the resignation of the EPA's head of regulatory enforcement, Eric Schaeffer. A career EPA official and former staffer to Republican Representative Claudine Schneider, Schaeffer said that he had finally given up fighting "a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce." Schaeffer was particularly alarmed about Clear Skies' effect on the nine lawsuits filed in the last year of the Clinton administration against power companies that had flouted the Clean Air Act. "The companies named in our lawsuits emit an incredible 5 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year," Schaeffer wrote, "a quarter of the emissions in the entire country." The EPA had already negotiated settlements with four power companies, "yet today we seem about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory." Previously negotiated settlements were falling apart, he said, and "other companies with whom we were close to settlement walked away from the table. ...We have filed no new lawsuits against the utility companies since this Administration took office. We obviously cannot settle cases with defendants who think we are still rewriting the law."
In July 2003, it was discovered that for months the EPA had been withholding from Congress its own analysis showing that proposals by moderate Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) would be more effective than Clear Skies in reducing pollutants--and only marginally more expensive. A leaked memo obtained by the Washington Post showed that, by 2020, the Carper plan (which was cosponsored by two Republican senators) "would result in 17,800 fewer premature deaths from power-plant air pollution than would Clear Skies. That would save $140 billion a year in health benefits--about $50 billion more than Clear Skies." This information, however, was withheld from Senator Carper. "All we're interested in is having a full and honest debate so we can make a well-informed decision, he later told the Post. "I don't believe that's too much to ask."
A full and honest debate, however, was not what Bush's EPA had in mind. The New York Times described a meeting at which EPA air programs czar Jeffrey Holmstead was briefed by career staff on the merits of the competing pollution reduction plan: "At a meeting on May 2, employees who attend it said, Mr. Holmstead of the E.P.A. wondered aloud, 'How can we justify Clear Skies if this gets out?'" Even the OIRA risk wizards could not help to justify Clear Skies. A major OIRA study showed that the economic benefits of tougher clean air regulations implemented by the Clinton administration were five to seven times greater than the costs, for a net economic gain to American society of at least $100 billion. John Graham released the report with the terse comment, "The data shows that the EPA's clean-air office has issued some highly beneficial rules." Highly beneficial, but apparently not beneficial enough to warrant keeping.
Ultimately, the EPA stopped worrying about justifying Clear Skies and simply eliminated the existing requirements. Instead of making plants modernize whenever they made substantial changes, the agency specified that clean up was required only if 20 percent of the total cost of a plant was spent at one time--a level that is almost never reached in upgrading an old facility. California's legislature promptly rejected application of the new rules to plants within its jurisdiction; eastern states that were victims of pollution from upwind states did not have that option.
A few months later, in November 2003, Schaeffer's nightmare came true: the EPA announced that it was going to drop investigations of 50 power plants for past violations of the Clean Air Act. This meant that the weakened rules were going to be applied retroactively as well, not only increasing pollution in the future but excusing it in the past. The EPA discouraged its staff from discussing this unprecedented decision to grant power plants a retroactive waiver of the law. On the same day the agency abandoned its cases, it also warned employees in the finest terms not to communicate with members of Congress, the press, or the public about this change--using as its excuse the need to preserve secrecy while prosecuting wrongdoers--even though it had decided to abandon the prosecution!
The New York Times reported that "the change grew out of a recommendation by Vice President Dick Cheney's task force... Representatives of the utility industry have been among President Bush's biggest campaign donors, and a change in the enforcement policies has been a top priority of the industry's lobbyists."
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
From Carl Pope's "Strategic Ignorance"
Strategic Ignorance
p.24
In keeping with this Beltway machismo, the Bush administration has played fast and loose with the health of people unlucky enough to live near power plants or toxic industrial sites. More than 16,000 old and dirty power plants, petroleum refineries, chemical factories, and industrial facilities were permanently exempted from having to install modern pollution control technologies. Under Bush's so-called Clear Skies proposal, many communities would be subjected to four times more toxic mercury from coal-fired power plants than they would if the Clean Air Act were simply enforced. Property contaminated with highly toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) can now be sold without any obligation for the seller to clean up. Caveat emptor: let the buyer beware.
The president allowed his brother, Jeb Bush, to resume injecting untreated wastewater into Florida's drinking water aquifiers. The administration allowed hazardous waste to be "recycled" into fertilizer, which could be used on playgrounds, golf courses, and parks--and then decided that such waste-based fertilizers could be used to grow food as well.
p.24
In keeping with this Beltway machismo, the Bush administration has played fast and loose with the health of people unlucky enough to live near power plants or toxic industrial sites. More than 16,000 old and dirty power plants, petroleum refineries, chemical factories, and industrial facilities were permanently exempted from having to install modern pollution control technologies. Under Bush's so-called Clear Skies proposal, many communities would be subjected to four times more toxic mercury from coal-fired power plants than they would if the Clean Air Act were simply enforced. Property contaminated with highly toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) can now be sold without any obligation for the seller to clean up. Caveat emptor: let the buyer beware.
The president allowed his brother, Jeb Bush, to resume injecting untreated wastewater into Florida's drinking water aquifiers. The administration allowed hazardous waste to be "recycled" into fertilizer, which could be used on playgrounds, golf courses, and parks--and then decided that such waste-based fertilizers could be used to grow food as well.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Other enviro news
Expanded drilling in Alaska
"While most of the 22 million-acre reserve is open to oil development, its lake-pocked northeastern corner has been fenced off, dating back to the Reagan administration, because of environmental concerns. That area also is viewed as having the highest oil and gas potential within the reserve."
My question is when is enough? I suspect that since the flood gates have already opened it will only be a matter of time. On the other hand, the oil industry might show gratitude to the Administration for all the favors by leaving the untampered northeastern for the people.
"Most of the federal petroleum reserve was opened for oil drilling during the Clinton administration, although then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt fenced off 840,000 acres, including the area around Lake Teshekpuk. Norton expanded drilling in the reserve last year, but also left the northeastern section alone."
Very generous of the Interior Secretary. Gale Norton has a horrific environmental record. One of the "key players" which I hope to expose in later posts. (Though others have already done so.)
Fourth-warmest year on record
"While most of the 22 million-acre reserve is open to oil development, its lake-pocked northeastern corner has been fenced off, dating back to the Reagan administration, because of environmental concerns. That area also is viewed as having the highest oil and gas potential within the reserve."
My question is when is enough? I suspect that since the flood gates have already opened it will only be a matter of time. On the other hand, the oil industry might show gratitude to the Administration for all the favors by leaving the untampered northeastern for the people.
"Most of the federal petroleum reserve was opened for oil drilling during the Clinton administration, although then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt fenced off 840,000 acres, including the area around Lake Teshekpuk. Norton expanded drilling in the reserve last year, but also left the northeastern section alone."
Very generous of the Interior Secretary. Gale Norton has a horrific environmental record. One of the "key players" which I hope to expose in later posts. (Though others have already done so.)
Fourth-warmest year on record
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Republican Spending Explosion
Special thanks to a member at Bob Beckel's forum.
"Unfortunately, the balanced budgets of the late 1990s created an "easy money" mindset in Congress, which began a spending spree that continues unabated today. Total federal outlays will rise 29 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005 according to the president's fiscal year 2005 budget released in February. Real discretionary spending increases in fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004 are three of the five biggest annual increases in the last 40 years. Large spending increases have been the principal cause of the government's return to massive budget deficits.
Although defense spending has increased in response to the war on terrorism, President Bush has made little attempt to restrain nondefense spending to offset the higher Pentagon budget. Nondefense discretionary outlays will increase about 36 percent during President Bush's first term in office. Congress has failed to contain the administration's overspending and has added new spending of its own. Republicans have clearly forfeited any claim of being the fiscally responsible party in Washington."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-087es.html
On an inflation-adjusted basis, the biggest spenders were:
Richard Nixon (R)
+ 8.6%
John Kennedy (D)
+ 8.3%
Dwight Eisenhower (R)
+ 7.6%
Franklin Roosevelt (R)
+ 6.7%
Lyndon Johnson (R)
+ 6.7%
The smallest spenders were:
Bill Clinton (D)
+ 1.6%
Ronald Reagan (R)
+ 2.1%
Jimmy Carter (D)
+ 2.7%
George H.W. Bush (R)
+ 3.5%
Harry Truman (D)
+ 3.5%
"Unfortunately, the balanced budgets of the late 1990s created an "easy money" mindset in Congress, which began a spending spree that continues unabated today. Total federal outlays will rise 29 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005 according to the president's fiscal year 2005 budget released in February. Real discretionary spending increases in fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004 are three of the five biggest annual increases in the last 40 years. Large spending increases have been the principal cause of the government's return to massive budget deficits.
Although defense spending has increased in response to the war on terrorism, President Bush has made little attempt to restrain nondefense spending to offset the higher Pentagon budget. Nondefense discretionary outlays will increase about 36 percent during President Bush's first term in office. Congress has failed to contain the administration's overspending and has added new spending of its own. Republicans have clearly forfeited any claim of being the fiscally responsible party in Washington."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-087es.html
On an inflation-adjusted basis, the biggest spenders were:
Richard Nixon (R)
+ 8.6%
John Kennedy (D)
+ 8.3%
Dwight Eisenhower (R)
+ 7.6%
Franklin Roosevelt (R)
+ 6.7%
Lyndon Johnson (R)
+ 6.7%
The smallest spenders were:
Bill Clinton (D)
+ 1.6%
Ronald Reagan (R)
+ 2.1%
Jimmy Carter (D)
+ 2.7%
George H.W. Bush (R)
+ 3.5%
Harry Truman (D)
+ 3.5%
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Sick Super Bowl Sunday and the conspicious consumer
Rah, Rah, The Money
"Like those who worship the sun, Americans who worship football, money and excess take this opportunity in dead of winter to pay tribute to the notion that sheer waste is the highest form of display. Thorstein Veblen would love this validation of his theories explaining the behavior of the leisure classes. The only major difference is that by the end of the 20th century the leisured classes have grown to become the leisured society.
At the turn of the previous millennium, Veblen described the styles of conspicuous consumption, conspicuous leisure and conspicuous waste as the means by which the leisured classes display their wealth to one another and to the lesser beings in their society. On a planet plagued by collapsed and collapsing economies, the ravages of war and malnutrition, and the human struggle for survival, the level of consumption at this time each year challenges the boundaries of the merely vulgar and obscene. With the maturing of the Super Bowl into a national festival, the upper classes display their wealth to one another while America itself displays its wealth to the world."
"Super Bowl Sunday is truly a great day - a tribute to American life as we enter this new millennium; a notice given to the rest of the world about who has the wealth and who aims to keep it; an invitation to all to share vicariously in the pleasures of imperial decadence during the high holy days of the American Century. No wonder Norman Vincent Peale once said, "If Jesus were alive today, he would be at the Super Bowl.
Finally, it should be noted that Ordinary Americans do not resent this spectacle of waste done largely at the taxpayers expense (nearly all costs are tax write-offs as business expenses), but rather it is admired and vicariously shared via the media, who dutifully report the excesses and extravagance. It is, of course, all good clean fun and it gets bigger, better and more excessive every year.
Proving once again that Welfare for the Rich can be fun."
BetonSports
"Christiansen Capital Advisors, a leading management consulting and market research firm servicing the gaming and entertainment industries, estimates that between $375-400 million will be bet on the Super Bowl through online sports books alone, an increase of between $50-75 million from 2002.
Compared to the $71.6 million wagered with land-based sports books in Las Vegas in 2003, online gambling is rapidly gaining popularity and acceptance among consumers throughout the United States."
How Stuff Works
"Americans double their average daily snack food consumption on Super Bowl Sunday. Let's take a look at what Americans are eating while they watch the big game:
* 30.4 million pounds of snack foods
* 11 million pounds of potato chips
* 13.2 million pounds of avocados
* 8.2 million pounds of tortilla chips
* 4.3 million pounds of pretzels
* 3.8 million pounds of popcorn
* 2.5 million pounds of snack nuts"
Source: Snack Food Association
How effective is advertising?
"How much did an advertiser pay for a 30 second spot on the last Super Bowl broadcast?
According to Advertising Age, January 12, 2004, $2,250,000 ($2.25 million).
To put that $2.25 million into some perspective, think about this. In 2000, the average teacher in the U.S. earned $36,972. At that rate, if one advertiser decided to forego one 30 second ad on the Super Bowl, s/he could pay the salaries of 60 new teachers for one school year. There were 54 thirty second in-game ad spots available during the Super Bowl broadcast. That means if we took the money that advertisers spent during that one program (approximately 3 to 4 hours long), we could pay the average yearly salaries of an additional 3,286 teachers in the U.S. That raises the question of what is more important to the nation, one afternoon's ads on one broadcast, or yearly salaries for 3,286 teachers. Looking at the advertisers' side, we need to remember that the money we spend on the products and services advertised goes to support people who might be out of work if we didn't spend that money. How many they are, and how much they earn, I can't say. Maybe we should know that too."
Don't Forget the Dip
"The teams and fans aren't the only ones who eagerly look forward to the Super Bowl. Super Bowl Sunday is also a favorite day of restaurants, bars, and food retailers. A long television program, plus a gathering of friends of family equals lots of food being eaten. Only Thanksgiving surpasses Super Bowl Sunday for one-day food consumption in America, according to the American Institute of Food Distribution."
% of the adult U.S. population (ages 20+) classified as overweight (a body mass index (BMI) equal to or greater than 27.8 for men, and 27.3 for women)
1976-80: 25.4% 1988-94: 38.4% 1998: 55.3%
Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States
"It is probably not coincidental that the leading restaurant, food and beverage companies spent nearly $11.5 billion in 2002 to convince us to eat and drink their products. That amounted to just under $4.8 billion more than they spent in 1996 (source: Advertising Age, Leading National Advertisers issues). While I don't have the numbers for the years leading up to 1996 in front of me, I feel confident in saying that they have increased steadily; probably matching the increase in our weights, and the changes in our beverage consumption patterns.
How many ads do you think you are exposed to on an average day?
3,000 according to Eli Noam ("Visions of the Media Age: Taming the Information Monster", in Multimedia: A Revolutionary Challenge) quoted in Data Smog by David Shenk. This is up from 560 per day in 1971.
* Advertising helps to keep consumers dissatisfied with their mode of life, discontented with "ugly" things around them. Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones. While the products may differ, the message is the same: Buying Things will make your life better."
THE INFLUENCE OF ADVERTISING ON OUR CHOICES
* Television has so successfully spread the religion of conspicuous consumption, that the world consumed as many goods and services since 1950 (the launching of TV) as had all previous generations put together.1
* North American children in 1995 spent over $10 billion and influenced over $150 billion worth of family purchases.1
* Since the 1950's global advertising spending per capita has steadily increased from $15 to $50 per person.1
* Every year the average American child watches 40,000 TV commercials.1
* The New York Timesestimates that the average American is exposed to 3,500 ads a day.
Impacts of Consumer Society
* If all the world's people lived like today's North Americans, it would take two additional planet Earths' to produce enough resources and to absorb the wastes.
* Each American produces about 4.3 pounds of trash every day. The total waste generated by Americans every day fills 63,000 garbage trucks.
* Reducing waste and recycling saves energy and slows global warming, it also reduces water pollution, acid rain and the soil erosion caused by logging.
"Like those who worship the sun, Americans who worship football, money and excess take this opportunity in dead of winter to pay tribute to the notion that sheer waste is the highest form of display. Thorstein Veblen would love this validation of his theories explaining the behavior of the leisure classes. The only major difference is that by the end of the 20th century the leisured classes have grown to become the leisured society.
At the turn of the previous millennium, Veblen described the styles of conspicuous consumption, conspicuous leisure and conspicuous waste as the means by which the leisured classes display their wealth to one another and to the lesser beings in their society. On a planet plagued by collapsed and collapsing economies, the ravages of war and malnutrition, and the human struggle for survival, the level of consumption at this time each year challenges the boundaries of the merely vulgar and obscene. With the maturing of the Super Bowl into a national festival, the upper classes display their wealth to one another while America itself displays its wealth to the world."
"Super Bowl Sunday is truly a great day - a tribute to American life as we enter this new millennium; a notice given to the rest of the world about who has the wealth and who aims to keep it; an invitation to all to share vicariously in the pleasures of imperial decadence during the high holy days of the American Century. No wonder Norman Vincent Peale once said, "If Jesus were alive today, he would be at the Super Bowl.
Finally, it should be noted that Ordinary Americans do not resent this spectacle of waste done largely at the taxpayers expense (nearly all costs are tax write-offs as business expenses), but rather it is admired and vicariously shared via the media, who dutifully report the excesses and extravagance. It is, of course, all good clean fun and it gets bigger, better and more excessive every year.
Proving once again that Welfare for the Rich can be fun."
BetonSports
"Christiansen Capital Advisors, a leading management consulting and market research firm servicing the gaming and entertainment industries, estimates that between $375-400 million will be bet on the Super Bowl through online sports books alone, an increase of between $50-75 million from 2002.
Compared to the $71.6 million wagered with land-based sports books in Las Vegas in 2003, online gambling is rapidly gaining popularity and acceptance among consumers throughout the United States."
How Stuff Works
"Americans double their average daily snack food consumption on Super Bowl Sunday. Let's take a look at what Americans are eating while they watch the big game:
* 30.4 million pounds of snack foods
* 11 million pounds of potato chips
* 13.2 million pounds of avocados
* 8.2 million pounds of tortilla chips
* 4.3 million pounds of pretzels
* 3.8 million pounds of popcorn
* 2.5 million pounds of snack nuts"
Source: Snack Food Association
How effective is advertising?
"How much did an advertiser pay for a 30 second spot on the last Super Bowl broadcast?
According to Advertising Age, January 12, 2004, $2,250,000 ($2.25 million).
To put that $2.25 million into some perspective, think about this. In 2000, the average teacher in the U.S. earned $36,972. At that rate, if one advertiser decided to forego one 30 second ad on the Super Bowl, s/he could pay the salaries of 60 new teachers for one school year. There were 54 thirty second in-game ad spots available during the Super Bowl broadcast. That means if we took the money that advertisers spent during that one program (approximately 3 to 4 hours long), we could pay the average yearly salaries of an additional 3,286 teachers in the U.S. That raises the question of what is more important to the nation, one afternoon's ads on one broadcast, or yearly salaries for 3,286 teachers. Looking at the advertisers' side, we need to remember that the money we spend on the products and services advertised goes to support people who might be out of work if we didn't spend that money. How many they are, and how much they earn, I can't say. Maybe we should know that too."
Don't Forget the Dip
"The teams and fans aren't the only ones who eagerly look forward to the Super Bowl. Super Bowl Sunday is also a favorite day of restaurants, bars, and food retailers. A long television program, plus a gathering of friends of family equals lots of food being eaten. Only Thanksgiving surpasses Super Bowl Sunday for one-day food consumption in America, according to the American Institute of Food Distribution."
% of the adult U.S. population (ages 20+) classified as overweight (a body mass index (BMI) equal to or greater than 27.8 for men, and 27.3 for women)
1976-80: 25.4% 1988-94: 38.4% 1998: 55.3%
Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States
"It is probably not coincidental that the leading restaurant, food and beverage companies spent nearly $11.5 billion in 2002 to convince us to eat and drink their products. That amounted to just under $4.8 billion more than they spent in 1996 (source: Advertising Age, Leading National Advertisers issues). While I don't have the numbers for the years leading up to 1996 in front of me, I feel confident in saying that they have increased steadily; probably matching the increase in our weights, and the changes in our beverage consumption patterns.
How many ads do you think you are exposed to on an average day?
3,000 according to Eli Noam ("Visions of the Media Age: Taming the Information Monster", in Multimedia: A Revolutionary Challenge) quoted in Data Smog by David Shenk. This is up from 560 per day in 1971.
* Advertising helps to keep consumers dissatisfied with their mode of life, discontented with "ugly" things around them. Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones. While the products may differ, the message is the same: Buying Things will make your life better."
THE INFLUENCE OF ADVERTISING ON OUR CHOICES
* Television has so successfully spread the religion of conspicuous consumption, that the world consumed as many goods and services since 1950 (the launching of TV) as had all previous generations put together.1
* North American children in 1995 spent over $10 billion and influenced over $150 billion worth of family purchases.1
* Since the 1950's global advertising spending per capita has steadily increased from $15 to $50 per person.1
* Every year the average American child watches 40,000 TV commercials.1
* The New York Timesestimates that the average American is exposed to 3,500 ads a day.
Impacts of Consumer Society
* If all the world's people lived like today's North Americans, it would take two additional planet Earths' to produce enough resources and to absorb the wastes.
* Each American produces about 4.3 pounds of trash every day. The total waste generated by Americans every day fills 63,000 garbage trucks.
* Reducing waste and recycling saves energy and slows global warming, it also reduces water pollution, acid rain and the soil erosion caused by logging.
Cheerleading degrades women
Rabbi Schmuley Boteach was on Michael Medved's program talking about the decline of female attire since the dawn of the feminist movement. It's an interesting subject when one considers feminism itself could arguably be traced as the culprit to the undoing of a woman's voice in society. Of all places it was Harvard college students who posed nude for an erotica magazine, and that some conservative commentary have cited feminism's celebration of women in (or atleast once was) a male-dominated workforce, as opposed to the celebration of uniquely feminine qualities--that being the nurturing, suckling, and other child-rearing duties of what is a traditional stay-at-home Mom.
The conversation between the rabbi and Medved became all the more alarming to me when I realized the latter was basing his defense not on what is, but what was. Medved pointed out the NFL cheerleaders of the '70s wore small and tight outfits. That women need room to jump and stretch while cheering for their team with [high] skirts as apparently opposed to something a little more subtle like shorts.
I then realized something that is almost a never with Medved's gifted mind: He was losing the debate, citing 'we have always seen cheerleaders underwear when their cheering' as a plausable counter to the rabbi's debunking. What? The Rabbi's point is women in society are something more than "Go team, go!" and "Do you think I look pretty?", in what has become an increasingly tired and cliched easy grab bag in the sports market game.
Then a caller defended his girlfriend, who is a Golden State Warrior pompomer, with these are "professional dancers" and go through months of rigorous training. I decided to investigate these GSW dancers for myself, soon realizing to an obvious conclusion that both sexes enjoy being the entertainer and entertained. This boyfriend was after all defending the best interests of his maleness.
I appreciate women more who have the attained wisdom from the likes of Hollywood's Golden Era. They were schooled in and understood a proper standard of dress and etiquette must be met irregardless of what the individual temptations were. This was still a decade before the beginning of the feminist movement, and when men went bonkers over clothed women. Because women only had (and have) to exist, period, to be noticed and garnished by male nature.
Today, Hollywood is filled with raunchy comedians, and the heroine-look amongst actresses doesn't seem to be totally passe as of yet. I look forward to the day when Norah Jones's career does have the final say over Britney, and reality television realizes its reality is maybe a little too real and pointless in seeking new lows for its participants to make a quick buck. Even what was funny at one time in Celebrity Deathmatch is now little more than a satire on to its own culture, let alone that of a Hollywood decline in sophistication.
Michael Medved's suprisingly unconvincing commentary on rabbi Schmuley Boteach's article leaves me with the impression he doesn't either believe or know that women have been short changed in the appreciation department for decades. If this is the case, it is tragic. And we as men, women, feminists, and a society must come together and work as one to create new ways that will bring about a stronger tradition which appreciates and hallmarks womens' natural gifts on a sustained level that goes beyond Mother's Day.
The conversation between the rabbi and Medved became all the more alarming to me when I realized the latter was basing his defense not on what is, but what was. Medved pointed out the NFL cheerleaders of the '70s wore small and tight outfits. That women need room to jump and stretch while cheering for their team with [high] skirts as apparently opposed to something a little more subtle like shorts.
I then realized something that is almost a never with Medved's gifted mind: He was losing the debate, citing 'we have always seen cheerleaders underwear when their cheering' as a plausable counter to the rabbi's debunking. What? The Rabbi's point is women in society are something more than "Go team, go!" and "Do you think I look pretty?", in what has become an increasingly tired and cliched easy grab bag in the sports market game.
Then a caller defended his girlfriend, who is a Golden State Warrior pompomer, with these are "professional dancers" and go through months of rigorous training. I decided to investigate these GSW dancers for myself, soon realizing to an obvious conclusion that both sexes enjoy being the entertainer and entertained. This boyfriend was after all defending the best interests of his maleness.
I appreciate women more who have the attained wisdom from the likes of Hollywood's Golden Era. They were schooled in and understood a proper standard of dress and etiquette must be met irregardless of what the individual temptations were. This was still a decade before the beginning of the feminist movement, and when men went bonkers over clothed women. Because women only had (and have) to exist, period, to be noticed and garnished by male nature.
Today, Hollywood is filled with raunchy comedians, and the heroine-look amongst actresses doesn't seem to be totally passe as of yet. I look forward to the day when Norah Jones's career does have the final say over Britney, and reality television realizes its reality is maybe a little too real and pointless in seeking new lows for its participants to make a quick buck. Even what was funny at one time in Celebrity Deathmatch is now little more than a satire on to its own culture, let alone that of a Hollywood decline in sophistication.
Michael Medved's suprisingly unconvincing commentary on rabbi Schmuley Boteach's article leaves me with the impression he doesn't either believe or know that women have been short changed in the appreciation department for decades. If this is the case, it is tragic. And we as men, women, feminists, and a society must come together and work as one to create new ways that will bring about a stronger tradition which appreciates and hallmarks womens' natural gifts on a sustained level that goes beyond Mother's Day.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Reasons why I usually do not get caught up in Presidential speeches
1. The self-congratulating
2. The day after news coverage
3. Because President's are crooks...
4. ...and even worse, they wear suits and ties to hide their crookidness in front of the camera to the country
5. The empty promises
6. The carefully prepared speeches spoken by the President but written by someone else
7. The already expected applause
8. The acting
9. The "Why should I have to miss my favorite TV program for this?!"
10. The repeation of the same speech in the following days on several stations
11. The knowing there will be another one of these televised speeches in the not too distant future
2. The day after news coverage
3. Because President's are crooks...
4. ...and even worse, they wear suits and ties to hide their crookidness in front of the camera to the country
5. The empty promises
6. The carefully prepared speeches spoken by the President but written by someone else
7. The already expected applause
8. The acting
9. The "Why should I have to miss my favorite TV program for this?!"
10. The repeation of the same speech in the following days on several stations
11. The knowing there will be another one of these televised speeches in the not too distant future
Monday, January 24, 2005
Farewell, Johnny
In my mind the last of the Late Night hosts with class. Thank you for the laughs and tears, Johnny Carson. He was 79.
Carson writes jokes for Letterman
Funny Carson quotes
Carson writes jokes for Letterman
Funny Carson quotes
Bush judicial nominees could shake the environment
"Sitting Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter has long warned against the judicial use of constitutional arguments to invalidate Congress's authority to regulate commerce -- a tactic that could negate environmental, public-health, labor, minority, and women's civil-rights protections in one massive strike. New Federalism is not new, he contends, but will march America back to the Lochner era of the courts, which lasted from the post-Civil War period until Roosevelt's New Deal.
Joseph Lochner was a New York baker whose corporate right to force employees to work 60-hour weeks was upheld by the Supreme Court. For seven decades, the courts maintained a laissez-faire attitude about business practices, ruling that the economic sphere was off-limits to congressional regulation, and that private property, especially corporate private property, was sacrosanct. That era's policies spurred political and corporate corruption, spawning the Robber Baron industrialists, a yawning gap between rich and poor, civil unrest, labor strikes and riots, bomb-throwing anarchists, two presidential assassinations, fierce government repression, genocide against the American Indians, and the near extinction of the American buffalo. It was an era whose gross human injustices were only reversed by New Deal reforms.
In the face of a kind of Lochner-era redux, environmental groups have little recourse, Feinman fears. "Other than opposing judicial nominations, we have a real problem here. We can't just wait for the next election, or defeat a bill in Congress. With the judiciary, we are dealing with a matter of constitutional law. Once high courts rule in an area, there is nothing that can be done by executive action, or by legislation, to change things. That's the end of the story. We could see a rollback of environmental law as part of a much broader rollback of government protection of the public interest. Once again, what is good for General Motors is good for the U.S.A."
Joseph Lochner was a New York baker whose corporate right to force employees to work 60-hour weeks was upheld by the Supreme Court. For seven decades, the courts maintained a laissez-faire attitude about business practices, ruling that the economic sphere was off-limits to congressional regulation, and that private property, especially corporate private property, was sacrosanct. That era's policies spurred political and corporate corruption, spawning the Robber Baron industrialists, a yawning gap between rich and poor, civil unrest, labor strikes and riots, bomb-throwing anarchists, two presidential assassinations, fierce government repression, genocide against the American Indians, and the near extinction of the American buffalo. It was an era whose gross human injustices were only reversed by New Deal reforms.
In the face of a kind of Lochner-era redux, environmental groups have little recourse, Feinman fears. "Other than opposing judicial nominations, we have a real problem here. We can't just wait for the next election, or defeat a bill in Congress. With the judiciary, we are dealing with a matter of constitutional law. Once high courts rule in an area, there is nothing that can be done by executive action, or by legislation, to change things. That's the end of the story. We could see a rollback of environmental law as part of a much broader rollback of government protection of the public interest. Once again, what is good for General Motors is good for the U.S.A."
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Bush speaks
I'm a little late on this article, but it discusses the Short and Long of Inaugural Addresses.
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