Thursday, November 11, 2010

If We Don't Have Science, What Do We Have

The Republican representatives up for chairmanship of the energy committee, as far as I know the only large committee dealing directly with environmental protection and climate change on a regular basis, are of course all global warming deniers. That's not a shock when all the new incoming representatives are deniers. These senior representatives, however, are in a place to drastically affect all policy regarding protection of the environment and energy policy and that should be disturbing to most Americans. At least one of them has said that if he gets the chairmanship he is going to have extensive hearings into 'climategate', the fake controversy over some snarky comments made by a climate scientist via emails, a controversy dug up and fabricated by the conservative media universe and especially FOX. They are determined to have hearings exposing, essentially, the fraud of global climate change.

This poses a serious risk to all of us, to our way of life and to the long-term health and national security of this nation. One key area of impact, for example, is the way Congress deals with and supports renewable energy. It will not be long before most developed nations will have cut their use of fossil fuels to where their needs will be satisfied by domestic production because of their development of renewable resources and green technology. In that scenario, we will be in major competition with nations in the processing of developing for those resources and will have become irrelevant in the global debate over the industrial and technological production of green solutions and environmental protection. Moreover it indicates to me a shocking disregard for the future welfare of our children, something that has at least rhetorically been so important to conservatives.

Overall, though, this indicates a disturbing and dangerous disregard and disdain for science and scientific reasoning. This goes along in some ways with my previous post regarding the demonization of education and the educated. It is a major problem for us as a nation if we decide that a major branch of science, one of the central branches in fact, which is Biology and the environmental sciences that arise from it, is irrelevant and inconclusive. There are in fact few credible scientists who disagree with the basic statement that man-made greenhouse gasses are at least partly responsible for the phenomena called climate change as an effect of global warming. The assertion of those on the conservative side of politics and especially the media have made the argument that many credible scientists who would argue with the science of global warming don't do so publicly for political reasons and because of the pressure they're under from the leftist green movement. Really?

Now, it baffles me why science as related to weapons and energy development is trustworthy to politicians yet the similar types of reasoning when applied to global warming is not. If nuclear technology and science is credible and rock solid science, why aren't the principles of thermodynamics as related to geophysics and climatology? In a similar way, why is the field of genetics, especially in relation to the work being done to cure cancer and treat diseases like Alzheimer's, so inarguable yet evolution, the basis and instigator for the study of genetics, is not?

All we have in terms of the ability to observe, measure and interact with the world around us, including the environment, is based on similar principles of scientific reasoning and analysis. They are based on the principles of skepticism and a desire to find empirical data and facts to support hypothesis and theory. If we cannot rely on these principles and the outcomes from them, than we are lost and America will never again be the scientific and technological leader we once were. If we cannot pursue policy that even our most scientifically ignorant president in recent memory, George W Bush, has come to believe is important, policy that is based on scientific knowledge agreed upon by 151 other nations who signed the Kyoto Protocols back in the 1990's, that we are doomed to diminish and eventually become a wasteland of pollution and ignorance.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Surviving Republican

Dear Republican Party:


You have won back the House of Representatives in an election year rife with unrest over the economy and jobs. To do so, however, you activated the farthest reaches of the right wing electorate and by doing so gave legitimacy to a kind of crass disregard for truth and facts that is outright dangerous for this countries future. Even more than that you have given legitimacy to candidates and a movement that actively spurn the value of education and being or becoming educated. You have demonized and marginalized large groups of minority voters, minorities who statistically are fast growing parts of the electorate. All of this in the name of politics.

It would be unwise, however, to believe the rhetoric of your recent victory speeches in saying that this was a referendum on the overall policies or agenda of President Obama. You should also not think that it is somehow a show of support for your own party agenda. While it is politically expedient to posture in front of the media, polls say that more of this country supports the Democratic Party than they do your party, that most people like the individual policies of the president and the Democrats more. What you should take this election as a referendum on is job creation. Tax cuts are nice, and they are important, but without putting people back to work, it doesn't matter to them what their tax rates are. They want a job or want to not fear over keeping their job.

Another mistake would be to waste time talking about 'Obamacare'. If the Democrats had done an effective job selling the message of the legislation to the American people from the beginning, you would never have gained the upper hand in the media. Much of what the bill does is supported by the American people. Of those who do not support the overall legislation there is a significant number who think it did not go far enough. It would be dangerous for your party to mistake the slogans and spin of Rush Limbaugh and FOX News as fact or as the prevailing sentiment of most of the country.

What is also a mistake is not to listen to moderates like Rudy Giuliani. It is time for your party to stop allowing candidates to run racially divisive campaigns. It is time for you to ease up on the social agenda that has dehumanized and degraded gays and lesbians. You have already lost the culture war on those issues. The country is becoming more diverse rather than less and more accepting of LGBT people and their civil rights. You will loose this part of the debate and history is already attesting to that. As Meghan McCain says, if you want to be relevant as a party in the future you have to not alienate massive portions of the electorate in the minority and young voters in order to guarantee the vote of a proportionally smaller group of white heterosexual Christian voters.

So what's the solution? For now, concentrate on the message of fiscal conservatism that was supposedly the hallmark of the Tea Party. If you think you can balance the budget and get the economy going again with conservative policies, do it. Set aside the social agenda many of the arch-conservatives in your party are proposing and really just concentrate on budgets. One of the other things that was consistently of concern to voters was the gridlock in Washington, which means the stalling and partisanship. You cannot complain about partisanship and point fingers if you have an opportunity for true compromise.

Does that give you cover with the Tea Party? For many it would, as fiscal issues is a #1 topic on everyone's mind. What will be more problematic, however, getting nothing done except trying to make Obama a one term president or getting something done that you can actually run on as an accomplishment? The choice is yours, but 2012 is not going to be all about tearing down the Obama agenda and administration, nor will it be all about the Tea Party, which prevails in a midterm but can't hope to rally the entire party for a presidential election. But either way, don't choose the few, choose the many, choose all of us.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Why did I go into $110K in debt for an education?

There is an issue in this country with education. I'm not talking about education with a capitol 'E' as in the Dept. of Education, or even the problems facing our schools or us fixing the system and become a leader in the world in terms of education. I'm talking about a basic belief that has come through clearly in this election that education is evil. While we say education is key to the future, we tell our children that if you want to be successful and happy you need an education, if you want to climb out of poverty or have options for a career you have to get an education. Everything about our individual and societal future depends on education.

So what's the problem? The problem is that because of disparate groups in this country galvanizing in the 1990's around the Republican Party, because they felt validated by the election of a president who did everything he could to endear himself to the American people by pretending he wasn't one of the wealthiest presidents from one of the most privileged backgrounds in our history, and lately by the Tea Party and their attacks on Barack Obama. Thanks to Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angles, we now have a social and political narrative that tells us that if you are educated, if you are intellectually above average and successful because you are talented and innovative and intelligent, and if you have any inkling about the makeup of Congress, current events or READ, than you are elitist. Not only are you elitist, but you are out of touch with the rest of the country and unfit to lead in any legislative or executive office anywhere in the country. Because Sarah Palin couldn't name a single newspaper or magazine off the top of her head in the Katie Couric interview in 2008, because she couldn't handle questions from any news outlet except FOX News and the conservative media, everyone but those friendly stations became the 'Lame Stream Media'. Thanks to those and others, disseminated through the media exposure and organizing of the Tea Party movement over the past several years, being a person with an education in this country makes you of less value.

Now, it has been true for a long time that intellectuals are often targets for totalitarian regimes, for fascist societies and political movements. Intellectuals think about things, and argue things and talk to other people about things. When intellectuals then disagree with a movement or regime they have to be silenced lest they foster unrest that erodes that regime or movement's power base. If that regime or movement is overtly and ideologically oppressing their people or if they are enforcing policies that have a broad reaching negative impact, more and more intellectuals speak out against that movement or regime. That is what we have here and it gets more and more insidious.

One topic that floats out among social conservatives in this country, and it floats around on all levels of government, is about the administration of our public schools. A central aspect, philosophically, to this topic is the issue of teaching 'Intelligent Design', which in reality is another word for creationism, the teaching of biology through the Biblical narrative of God creating the Earth and universe and all things and all creatures. This has been a point of contention over and over again in local and state school boards with parents advocating its teaching in place of evolution, or at the very least as a 'viable' alternative to evolution. At the national level, one of the areas of the budget most Republicans are willing to cut, or at least they say this as they're campaigning, is the Education budget. Sharon Angles and a number of other fringe candidates even want to dismantle the Department of Education. Christine O'Donnell mentioned, in reference to teaching ID (creationism) in public schools, that all those curriculum decisions should be made on the local level, that everything should be on the local level.

There aren't general education standards in this country, despite all the testing to grade schools and districts on their proficiency rates. There are, however, standardized tests required by colleges and universities. Why? Because they want to see that a student is able to handle the academic requirements, that they are a desirable candidate for their school, and that they have long-term potential to become successful in the world, thereby reflecting well on their alma mater and donating money as an alum. Whether or not this is a major hurdle for students in this country based on race and socioeconomic status, it would only become that much harder when there is no nationally funded government agency to help support the administrative infrastructure for testing. It would only become that much harder by removing even the appearance of some national standard of education and putting curriculum on the local level.

Of course conservatives want the curriculum decisions to be placed on the local level. They want religious to conservatives to have more control over their kids' education, they want to have more control over the 'moral' or 'social' issues brought up in the schools. Evolution then wouldn't be the only thing for the chopping block. Another perennial issue is 'sex education', or what the rest of us know as health class. Effectively they probably would be most comfortable to return education in this country, and some have said this explicitly, to that of the 1950's. All of that is representative of the incredibly romanticized version of that period in history that many in this country believes in. They may want this for many reasons, too many for me to speculate, but the effect would be to indoctrinate all of our children in a worldview that isn't even recognizable to our modern world. It would ignore the empirical evidence of climate change and the effects of industrialization on the environment, convince children that industries have our best interests at heart as they cut costs to produce food more cheaply, all while promoting the idea that America is the greatest country in the world to the exclusion of everyone else, not just that we can but that we have the right to take unilateral action in the pursuit of our own perceived national interests.

Not incomprehensible is the connection between these conservative ideas of 'local' control and the religious fundamentalism that has become pervasive throughout the Republican Party. It has allowed people of generally less political knowledge, awareness on current events, and general education to congregate around some very well funded party leaders masquerading as outsiders. The rhetorical device of 'educated elite', especially representing them as all from New England, sits really well with working and lower class voters in other parts of the country, and especially in rural areas. These voters then were duped into trusting candidates whose own funding can be traced directly to insider political action groups and often directly to enormously wealthy individuals and corporations. Their own lack of political knowledge and savvy let them vote against their own interests in candidates who we are now seeing turn against some of their own campaign messages and a party interested in nothing but obstruction and further economic problems. At odds with this are the many labor unions who activated their traditionally Democratic base and supported Democratic candidates with money and people-power. These unions recognize the connections between corporate interests and financial groups and the deeply held principles of the Republican Party's conservative agenda antagonistic to the working class.

Where does that leave us as a country? Well, on climate change for instance, 151 nations signed the Kyoto Protocols back in the late 1990's. President Clinton abstained, as did India and China, because it called for a large reduction in fossil fuel emissions. That means that 151 nations, including all of the industrialized nations we call allies and who have historically stable economies and governments, recognize the threat of global climate change resulting from global warming and its involvement in destroying ecosystems and the environment. With every new Republican member of Congress stating during their campaigns they do not believe in global warming, and with several of them looking to hold public high profile hearings to prosecute the 'hoax' of global warming, how can we even think about being competitive in any meaningful way. When evolution, a central principle to all of science, the cornerstone of the field of Biology and it's resulting disciplines, and to the field of genetics so crucial to the fight of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's, how can we expect to progress in any of the sciences when it is not just questioned by our politicians, but policies put in place that discourage it from being included in classrooms and promoting religiously inspired doctrine instead?

Something that gives me hope, and something that has always made the socially conservative politicians in this country call academia 'liberal', is that in universities and colleges, you are required to prove your points by citing sources, defending sources, defending theories and hypothesis and the process you used to develop those from the evidence you collected. In science, for instance, you are required to present all of your evidence and facts in a structured way and cite any sources. If there is anything faulty in your research methodology, in the quality of the sources or in the logic in whatever argument you're making, your professor gives you a lower grade, talks with you about how you went about your work, or helps to correct errors to strengthen your work. Other fields of study follow similar methods, they call it critical thinking, and it requires you to think beyond just the words on a page, to develop connections and ideas with other material or sources you've read or encountered, and to argue your point in a clear and convincing way. We all have to go through this when we go through a college or university education. We all may not be at a school with the same level of academic intensity, not all of us are able to compete at the same academic level or are interested in pursuing a very academic career path or studies, but we are all challenged to learn and think beyond the superficial.

That is what really is at the heart of the whole idea of 'educated elite', which then translates to 'liberal elite', or if it's about a schism between Sarah Palin and the real Republican Party, the 'establishment elite' or 'Washington elite'. Somehow it's always about 'elite', and how the 'elite' is bad. Well, when you are dealing with multinational corporations, with international trade or political policy, when you are dealing with micro- and macroeconomic issues, with stabilizing and incredibly diverse economy and understanding the intricacies of a multicultural and multilateral approach to prosecuting a war, instead of just sending planes to bomb the hell of out whomever, don't you want the elite? Doesn't 'elite' mean the best, the highest order of whatever it's being applied to?

Of course some random housewife with a mediocre education and no policy background will never be considered to be qualified to become president. Running the nation isn't anything like running a household, despite whatever she might say. Stabilizing the world's largest economy during major global economic uncertainty is nothing like balancing a family checkbook or paying household bills. No, 'common sense' solutions have absolutely no place in Washington, D.C. because that's where we want the smartest, brightest, most talented people in the fields of economics, political science, law and international trade to be and to be working. Sarah Palin is a million miles from any of that. And if an ignorant housewife with no business experience and who has no political skills at all other than being an agitator within her own party can become president, then what the hell did I take on $110K in student loan debt for?

Anti-Gay = Homophobia = Bigot

This is a little addendum to my last post. Most people get uncomfortable when someone throws around the term 'racist'. Of course when we think of racists we think of white power groups and the KKK. There are institutionalized forms of racism as well, sometimes institutionalized to the point where we commonly accept some things that truly discriminate against ethnic and racial minorities.

Imagine, then, how those same people react when we throw around the term 'homophobia'. Because there is material in the Bible and because many religious institutions have taken public positions on the subject of homosexuality, there seems to be some defense for those who are homophobic to act out on that belief or feeling. Many of those same religious excuses, though, were and still are used by white supremacy groups or by politicians who sought to activate voters by playing on the fears of black people taught by society to white people from a young age.

When the excuse of faith fails, however, as it does when politicians are cornered in discussions of federal policy issues or civil and constitutional rights, they refuse to recognize the term homophobia as to them their fear is legitimized by their faith, thus they are anti-gay. What is the result of anti-gay politics? The restrictions of rights, the spreading of fear of gay people and demonizing them through media. The result is the creation of an environment in our society where anyone who is different, who is gay or perceived as gay, is made to feel less than those around them, and in the cases of anyone and in particular young people struggling to develop a healthy sense of self and understanding of their own sexuality, the result can be suicide.

Mr. McCance in Arkansas is a good example of the result of the socialization of homophobia into our society. The rhetoric he used was hateful rhetoric that could only be borne out of fear of the impact of gay people on society, fear of the impact of homosexuality on his children and fear of how a society accepting of people who are gay would affect his own life. The same can be said for the anti-marriage effort in Iowa for the 2010 midterm elections. Hateful and vile rhetoric was used to demonize gay people, to compare them to many types of behavior criminalized by our society, including and especially bestiality, and rhetoric that ultimately leads to the question, what should gay people do?

If gay people are so bad, what should they do to be 'better' or to fit in with this fictional society conservatives like to allude to that is moral and virtuous? Well, since it is a choice, they need to change and live decent lives as heterosexuals. Barring that they should just stop being sexually active altogether. Since it would be unacceptable to any heterosexual to be forced to be celibate, it seems contradictory to then require that of homosexuals.

As all credible studies have shown that homosexuals are not able to alter their sexual behavior and preferences in the long-term, and therapy to support changing orientation has been deemed harmful to the individual by the American Psychiatric Association, as well as other national medical organizations, then the question is for those who can't or won't change, what should they do? Should they be rounded up and put in camps? Should they be forced to move into a specific part of this country, maybe reservations? Should they be forced to leave this country even though they are American citizens? How far does the reasoning go? How far does the anti-gay lobby want to go with their vision of a gay-free America?

There is a difference between people who have faith and believe in their faith's teachings about homosexuality and those who would want to legislate it. The difference is the fear. By playing on a common discomfort with the subject of homosexuality, the anti-gay lobby incites that fear in others. But most reasonable people recognize that it is fear, most people don't want to be bothered policing the lives of others and recognize that common 'live and let live' or 'do unto your neighbor...' philosophy. That is why the National Organization for Marriage uses the issue of voters' rights to spread their message.

In conclusion, if America is bettered by denying gay people civil rights, then what is the ultimate goal for anti-gay activists? Because of the rhetoric they use and the ideology they propose we know that they are hateful toward gay people. If that hate doesn't arise from fear of LGBT, than where does it come from? Ultimately hatred causes bigotry, and in any respect to any other minority group that bigotry would be denounced and would not be tolerated.

The Homosexual Patriot

There was a consistent theme among the campaigns of Tea Party candidates, and within the propaganda of the continuing Tea Party movement, that they are on the side of 'truth' and 'liberty'. Most of us probably remember being taught at young ages that lying is bad, that we are supposed to tell the truth, meaning admit to something we've done. For some this is a religiously informed moral issue, for some it is a matter of developing a firm ethical mindset not dependent on a religious ideology. For most of us, though, we are taught that there is one truth, one reality, one concrete right and wrong.

As we grow up, however, and especially as we educate ourselves about the world around us, we recognize that 'good' and 'evil', 'right' and 'wrong' are often subjective. On an individual level it is easy to differentiate between the two in terms of one's own actions and behaviors. When we expand our scope of subject to a whole community or even a whole culture, things grow very murky. That is one thing that empirical data and facts are supposed to help clarify. One of the benefits of science, and specifically how it's been applied to social sciences, is that we have quantitative descriptions and results of surveys regarding the impact of our behaviors. These surveys and studies, however, are not entirely faultless, they can be skewed toward a specific answer or research goal, questions and problems designed to find certain outcomes.

This is one reason why we look toward independent groups, groups not tied to, associated with or who financially support political campaigns and ideological groups. We have many organizations like this in this country, some are directly involved in statistical analysis and we see their names most often during an election season as they tabulate polls. The other body we look to for empirical studies and information are to independent universities, either non-religious private schools or even religious private schools known for impartiality, or toward public universities. Even within these bodies are individual researchers and professors looking for specific answers or for answers that reflect their own beliefs. There are, however, standards imposed on them and critical analysis and discussion of their work, including refuting articles and surveys to disprove overtly skewed and partial findings.

Why am I mentioning all of this? Because it becomes very important when looking at political candidates, campaigns and specifically campaign ads. The idea of a campaign ad is to either stress all the good things about a specific candidate or to attack their opponent. The art of an attack ad, as I see it, is to make the opponent look bad and distance them from the electorate, all while making the candidate sponsoring the ad either look good by comparison or attacking in a way that doesn't cause a negative reaction against the sponsoring candidate. We saw this with several ads that had, with some, drastic, impacts on the campaigns and ultimate defeats of certain candidates this year. Jack Conway, for one, ran an attack ad against Rand Paul that included information about activities of Paul during college when he was 19. That ad allowed Paul to inch ahead and ultimately claim a strong victory. Sharon Angles with her ads tying Harry Reid to illegal immigration was another ad that had blow back, or in which there was a negative reaction back on Angles.

Ideally we'd like to think that even though ads stretch the truth or skew the truth, that they do present the truth. Often, and I'd like to say that it happens more often with Republican candidates but I know that's not true, the truth gets so obscured by the message the ad tries to convey or by the spin on the facts presented that the facts actually are misrepresented or are outright lies. Sharon Angles, for example, in her ad tying Harry Reid to illegal immigrants outright lied about portions of legislation he helped sponsor or move forward in the Senate, claiming they did exactly the opposite of what the language really was about. This was part of the way the Tea Party worked, they were responsive only to message and not to facts or reality.

Then enters the National Organization for Marriage and the Iowa elections. This organization along with Focus on the Family, and the seemingly credible in name only Family Research Council, spent millions on a bus tour around the state, including candidates for Iowa legislative positions, all aimed at removing three of that state's Supreme Court justices. The message they tried to promote was that Iowans should have been allowed to vote on same-sex marriage, that the judges were engaging in the worst kind of 'judicial legislating' or 'judicial activism'. That message resonated with voters in a state that has often been mainstream liberals, part of the upper Midwestern Democratic political base arising from the farmer and labor unions and incorporated into the state Democratic parties. In MN, for example, the state party is called the DFL, or the Democratic Farmer Labor party as there used to be, decades ago, a separate Farmer Labor party.

I've written over and over again about the hypocrisy of the Tea Party movement, and of its outright ignorance of both the political process and politics in general. This, however, is less about the Tea Party voters across the country and more about the politics of it all. There is no 'liberty' or 'freedom' while one group of Americans is denied the same rights that are expected and taken for granted by another group of Americans. Also, and many of our founders recognized and remarked on this, the rights of the minority should never be put up to a popular vote. The majority would never choose to advance or protect the rights of the minority. This is what we've seen in a number of states where the issue of same-sex marriage has been put to a vote. This is also why we see political blow back from enough of the Iowan electorate to successfully remove three justices from the state Supreme Court, an act that has never happened in that state's history. The argument by the anti-marriage people is that the citizens have a right to vote on the measure. That somehow by upholding their constitutional responsibilities as interpreters of laws and their constitutionality, the Supreme Court had overstepped their authority and infringed on the rights of state voters.

Just to rehash the historical significance of the same-sex marriage judicial decisions versus the voter rights issue, inter-racial marriage laws existed throughout the country until one case on the matter succeeded through the federal court system and eventually to the Supreme Court, thereby striking down all laws barring inter-racial marriage in this country. If there was to be a popular vote on the matter during the 1950's and 60's when that case was being considered, would the voters have recognized the rights of those individuals? No. How can I tell, because the representatives of those voters in the legislative branch never repealed that law, and in fact had fought all through that period to keep Jim Crow laws and segregation. A similar case happened in the more recent case in which the Supreme Court struck down the anti-sodomy law in Texas after two gay men who had been in the privacy of their home had been arrested and charged with sodomy. That law had remained in place until the court struck it down, and then not long after voted to ban any and all forms of legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples both within the state and unions from other states.

So now we get to the crux of this idea of 'truth' that I talked about earlier. We have decades of studies supporting the positive impact of gay civil rights on gay individuals, on their communities and on our society at large. We have multiple studies proving that children raised by gay couples are in no more danger of being molested, turning gay or doing poorly in school as those raised by heterosexuals. In states where gay marriage has already been the law for most of the decade, namely Massachusetts, there has been no significant impact on the marriages of heterosexual people, churches haven't been forced to recognize or perform gay marriages, and people of faith haven't been forced by the state to accept homosexuality in a way contrary to their beliefs. Gay people and the recognition of their human and civil rights are a reality in this country just as they are a reality all around the world. In nations around the globe there is greater tolerance and acceptance of LGBT people and even recognition of their relationships. Some of the nations that already have same-sex marriage are surprising as they are historically and predominantly Catholic. Others that are just as surprising have civil unions, civil partnerships or domestic partnership laws recognizing the rights of LGBT couples.

When groups like the National Organization for Marriage parade around and yell about 'truth' and about 'freedom', they are lying to people. From their perspective the rhetoric they are using is important, is necessary to save their vision of America, and is the truth. What is apparent to anyone not central to that organization or to groups like Focus on the Family is that what is also clear is that what is important to them is hatred. For all of their talk about freedom what they really want is the ability to discriminate and hate with impunity. They want a state that reflects their ideas and beliefs while rejecting anyone who disagrees with them. A state constructed around their ideology would only permit sanctioned behaviors and would punish anyone who didn't fit into their rigid models. What's probably most ironic about these people is that there is a total disregard for policing their own behaviors. While purporting to be Christians they act without charity or compassion, they denigrate and demonize whole groups of people and use dehumanizing language to depict two specific fictional narratives, one a reality in which gay marriage is legal and America descends into complete chaos because of its depravity, the other a fictional tale of America returning to some version of itself that never existed and was never possible in part by prohibiting immoral behaviors.

This is the same ideology that would outlaw abortion, and following the logic of outlawing any non-sanctioned behaviors, then pornography would be illegal, alcohol would be illegal, smoking would be illegal, literature and media, especially the internet and video games, would be censured for anything deemed illicit and for violence. They parade around their own moral behavior and cite examples of the 'truth' as dictated through the research of groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, as well as specifically anti-gay groups like Exodus International. These groups represent their 'facts' as empirical and their opinions as representative of the majority of people in this country, but here is the hard reality - these are political organizations. They fund ads campaigning for ballot initiatives and either for or against specific candidates. They participate in lobbying and campaigning through passing out literature, signing petitions and on-the-ground campaigns, meaning knocking on doors and making phone calls. These are not the activities of departments at a university that puts out studies and surveys. It is not the behavior of independent polling groups.

So what is the 'truth'. As the Senate Majority Leader in Iowa said recently while quoting his daughter in speaking to a group of conservative men denigrating gay people and same-sex marriage, "You've already lost. My generation could care less." That is the problem with all the people who want to prohibit behavior and demonize whole groups of people. As we move forward even fiscal conservatives are socially progressive. That is one of the reasons why Megan McCain is worried about the radical elements of the Tea Party pushing the Republican party into irrelevancy. Our nation was founded on radically progressive ideas that we all should not only have rights, as other nations had those, but that we should be an entirely representative government in which we are governed not just 'by the people' but also 'for the people'. Any act, then, that exercises those 'inalienable' rights is a patriotic act. Anyone who would deny those rights to any one citizen or who would obstruct their pursuit of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' is then unpatriotic, and un-American.

Thereby, all people of the LGBT community who live their lives in honesty, whether publicly open or not, and who pursue their own vision of who they are and what they want their lives to be is a patriot. It is a revolutionary act to challenge a norm dictated to us by an inflexible and violently fascist societal regime. When they gain political power or control over us we then must make our voices heard even louder and be that much stronger in our conviction not to be dictated to or to be intimidated into fear. Just as the Tea Party enjoys their right to free speech, so to do we, and while they use rhetoric of fear and divisiveness to demonize us and sway public support against us, so too do we have the power of truth and of reality and honesty. In a time when pundits and political fascists try to pervert our perceptions of reality with untruthful polls and un-factual studies, we have the face of honesty and moderation, we have families and individuals who look just like their neighbors and who work alongside everyone else without disrupting others' lives or their communities. We have family members and close friends who have swayed the opinions and hearts of others through love and inspiring those others to open their minds and hearts to the LGBT community and our civil rights.

For all the rhetoric and slogans and political speeches, it is not the Tea Party who are patriots with their fake activism and their historic costumes. It is the minorities of educated people, intellectuals, a group demonized in every other corrupt regime around the world, of LGBT people living their lives in honesty and with respect, of ethnic and racial minorities who refuse to be shut out of institutions of learning and traditional career fields. We are the patriots, we are what makes America a 'melting pot', a blending of cultures. Without us this would be a very different nation. If America is a place of acceptance of diversity, of freedom and of honesty and compassion, then anyone who would deny others rights they themselves enjoy are the poison that is helping to destroy our country.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

What Dems could have done to create a Green Economy

Now we've seen the wave and it did indeed sweep through Congress. What's hopeful is that now there is a more balanced legislative body and as long as the Republicans are willing to dance the dance of compromise, along with Dems doing the same, we might finally get things done. That is, of course, contingent on the Republicans not following through with their pledge to making their #1 priority making sure that Obama is a one-term president.

In all the shouting about Health Care and Financial Reform, both of which were important pieces of legislation, the moneys already put into the economy by the Stimulus has yet to see a large recovering in the job market and a reduction in the unemployment rate. What are the problems still holding us back? According to Bill Clinton it's that we don't have people with the skills to fill the jobs opening up. He said on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart that there are three jobs being posted for every one applicant. What he saw as a necessary solution is a concentration on retraining those people still looking to stay in the work-force, those not near retirement age, to move into those positions.

Chris Matthews, on the other hand, says that we need to get back to being a country that builds things. He cited other tough economic times when the government created public works projects that created tons of new jobs that were labor jobs, especially construction jobs, which are some of the industries hardest hit by the death of the job market. Central to his rants about public works projects is that we also need to combine that with looking forward and cites the high speed trains in China.

The truth is that despite all the rhetoric about how we are the greatest country in the world with the greatest technology and the wealthiest country, much of the wealth is in the highest two or three percent of Americans. Much of the technology is locked up in specialized areas of the economy, such as the technology employed by the military. There is absolutely no excuse for the fact that more than a few countries now have high speed rail, or other public works infrastructures that represent investments in green-technology or a desire to be environmentally responsible.

Some countries tap into their geological features such as Iceland which incorporates a large amount of geothermal energy into their power system. They also recycle 95% of their consumer waste. Some people may say that that wouldn't work in the United States, or if they are ignorant and crazy they'd say that that is foreign socialism trying to take over and that that may work 'over there' but it isn't right for America. Well, let me say this - we have to wake up and address serious environmental threats that are affecting our economy which go beyond the BP oil spill. There is more and more trash being dumped into the oceans than ever before. It's not just the United States, but because we have so much coastline for which fishing and the ocean are central parts of their economy, it is crucial that we deal with these things. Another example is, of course, the dying sea food industries in New England, a region for which sea food and fishing are a major economic component.

So what are the solutions? What could Dems have done and could still do?

- Education - We have for decades stressed that kids have to go to college. People put a lot of emphasis on graduating from high school and dropout rates as a problem and then cite kids going on to college as indicators of the success of our education system. Those aren't ways of solving our problems with our work-force. And let's be real, if someone goes on to college and doesn't major in chemistry or engineering, or in a business degree with some practical application like accounting, or in a teaching degree, then that person has to go on to get a master's degree to be competitive at all in a large city. In a high school in metropolitan areas it is necessary to have a master's in order to be competitive. The Solution: Concentrate on funding training programs, not community colleges necessarily, but training programs that specialize in manufacturing and technological fields in the green energy industries. That would represent a green energy commitment that goes beyond rhetoric about 'green technology' and 'green energy solutions'.

- Public Works Projects - What the Obama administration has talked about when talking about infrastructure has been rebuilding highways and bridges. Yes, is that important? Absolutely. And as exhibited by surveys of bridges, we have far too many crumbling bridges. That's not progressive thinking, though, and it's not a solution that provides significant enough jobs, not in comparison to the need for labor positions. What we need is massive works projects like Eisenhower's interstate highway system. Chris Matthews is exactly right when he talks about high speed trains. There is no reason we couldn't have high speed trains at least from Boston to DC that would cut travel time between those cities from eight hours probably down to two or three hours. There is no reason people couldn't take a train from New York to LA in a day or two when they could drive it in two or three but on a train it might take a week. The portioning out of the necessary components of a high speed rail line would be fantastic. You could have a dozen states building what would become the actual train itself. The track for the high speed rail, which despite what some people might think would not be able to run on traditional train tracks because they wouldn't be able to handle the load and stress, would create construction jobs in every area it went through and at the very least could be contracted out to a handful or more of construction groups. All of this would go toward a type of building project that would potentially have an enormous impact on our travel habits and how we think about green solutions.

- Government Contracts - One of the things I've been saying for a few years now was that because the US government leases SO many cars for their agencies and government employees, everything from bureau chiefs having government supplied cars to the cars that security and law enforcement forces use, there is an immediate market for the manufacturing and commercial distribution of clean energy cars. Now whether that would be hybrid cars or hydrogen cars would be a logistical issue. I think, however, that if the US government contracted with Honda, who came out a few years ago with a hydrogen fueled car, for a few thousand hydrogen cars and put in the fuel stations to supply fuel for those cars, we could have commercially viable clean energy cars gaining a major foothold in this country. Honda hasn't been the only company working on a hydrogen fueled car either. GMC has been working on a model for years. How close that is to production, I don't know, but if one major hurdle to revolutionizing our fleet of government leased cars is trying to buy American made cars, then hopefully that solution will come soon.

- Green Energy Solutions - More than a decade ago in MN there was a controversy over a nuclear power plant. At that time there was a lot of discussion about alternative energy solutions, since MN is a state that bases the vast majority of its economy on the environment, between the huge number of farms or the enormous amount of travel business brought in by our wilderness areas and lakes. It was interesting to hear a serious discussion in the early 1990's about the many types of green energy sources, especially biomass, ethanol and solar and wind power. Now when you drive through parts of MN, especially southern MN, you see wind farms with dozens of massive wind turbines where it was once nothing but rows of corn. We are a state that has for years sought green energy sources and solutions. Whatever green energy revolution we have in this country will have to come from a diversified energy portfolio. Some types of green energy that might work in one part of the country simply will not work in another. In MN solar power isn't practical as for much of the autumn, winter and parts of the spring it is too overcast. That's one reason why wind power makes sense, especially in parts of the state known for their wind storms and tornadoes. Solar power does work, however, in areas with large expanses of desert, or in areas with arid plains not really suitable for farming and maybe not really suitable for grazing livestock. I'm not sure what the issues would be with power companies, but if our government were serious about green energy, we would be building strategic power stations that played on the strengths of those natural resources and leasing them out to companies. That would provide jobs on the local level while having a major impact on our energy consumption.

- Green Production - To piggy back off of a few earlier points, our government builds and renovates government buildings all the time. Buildings have to be maintained and updated constantly all across this country. If we are serious about the development of green industries, than it is crucial to not just talk about green energy, but to draw upon the many industries producing green construction materials and green cleaning products, as well as recycling. Just a simple internet search shows that there are many types of construction materials and products that are green and just as good as traditional materials. Anyone who has looked through the aisle at the supermarket with the cleaning supplies knows that there are environmentally friendly products out there. Even adding exterior features to existing buildings, specifically solar panels, would not only boost the availability and production of solar panels but also provide even more energy solutions on the local level.

What's important to realize about all of these is that suggestions is that they all either train people for jobs or create jobs. The push for green energy and production and the creation of new jobs are not mutually exclusive. The government has the potential to do these things on a massive scale and thereby ensuring that our nation finally gets out of the dark and back into a leadership position in green technologies. All we have to do is look to model countries, especially in northern Europe, to see that these are real and concrete solutions and that the options for incorporating these solutions into our society through government agencies is enormous.

All of these things could have been done by Democrats right away and have placated the base, or could still be done through compromise with Republicans, many of whom have a vested interest in environmental action, and to have stimulated desirable areas of the economy and created jobs.