The Pandemic

Since the pandemic issues are changing rapidly, I don't want to write much about it.  But, I wanted to provide a link to a fabulous outline of the issues, essentially what we know what we don't know.  Click here for the link.

Here is Seattle, we now have, as of this morning, three confirmed cases.  The elementary school where one child has been diagnosed is now closed.  

Google is providing maps of the flu.  And Vice President Biden recommends not taking planes or trains (as in public transportation, boy that will rile the mass transit folks in this city!).

And last, here is some video discussing the pandemic provided by my colleagues with the Society of Environmental Journalists.  Sorry about the ads you have to watch...

While it is all confusing and made even more so by a media that thrives on crisis (has CNN picked it's pandemic music, yet?), my suggestion is similar to President Obama's.  Be prudent, do your research, and wash your hands.

The policy discussions will continue to fall out, everything from tracing food sources, corporate or mass feed lot raised meats and poultry, to, of course, trans-boundary issues of human migration.  But at this point those discussions are for later.  

As we find more sites and information that will be helpful, we will post it.

Honey! I Shrunk the Economy!

The economy continues to shrink.  It's the 100th day of the Obama Administration, a benchmark which is convenient for the media but seems arbitrary and useless for the rest of us, but on this day, President Obama has to worry whether he has implemented enough steps to arrest the economic contractions.

Ironically, today is the shareholder's meeting for Bank of America.  Ken Lewis, the head of Bank of America, has been in his office for over 7 years.  And during those 7 years he has been part of a real estate boom and bust that has rocked and roiled the global economy.  Chances are, despite some shareholder activists, Lewis will remain the head of the company, the Dead Bank Walking, while complaining his salary and bonus is not high enough.

More important, however, is that President Obama has expressed optimism that the economic stimulus packages will create 2 to 3 million jobs.  That's great, except we are now at an unemployment rate far greater than 2 or 3 million.  

We have a long long way to go before we have figured out how to have a sustainable economy, not subject to the "wizards" of the financial industry's ideas to spread risk on lending practices or whatever other scheme they come up with that will cause our economic stability to crash down around us.  The first step is, during the next 100 days, for Congress to insert ear plugs and stop listening to the financial industry lobbyists.  Then pass legislation that mandates regulation of this industry so that they are not risking our money on Ponzi-like schemes where they and only they come out richer.

The first 100 days have been good, hopefully the next 100 get better.  

In the meantime, anyone know where the economy went?

Holy Cow Arlen Spector!

Well.  What a news day.  Between the swine flu epidemic and real estate prices continuing to fall (I keep thinking about my realtor friend who sincerely believed values would not fall in Seattle because "there is no place left to build" and I wonder what he thinks now) I thought we had enough news for one "cycle," but along comes US Senator Arlen Spector from Pennsylvania, formerly a Republican, now a Democrat.  Holy cow!

As I was driving around noon, I heard the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, somberly intone that Spector's "treason" is cause of great concern for all Americans because it inches the Democrats closer to becoming filibuster proof in the US Senate.  "The majority party will get everything they want, there are no checks, no balances," he said.  I had to laugh thinking that was never his concern when the Republicans had a filibuster proof majority in the US Senate and a huge majority in the House.  But life on Capital Hill ebbs and flows.  Someday the Republicans will be in the majority, again.

But in the meantime, perhaps Senator McConnell and his party should do a bit of self-reflection rather than a large dose of verbal non-sense.  Senator Spector leapt ship because of the rather large leaks in the Republican Party boat.  Their failures to suggest positive solutions to the depression (oops, here I go again) and to, in fact, any other domestic issues, much less their cranky hypocritical pronouncements on life choices, have finally made them seem out of touch with most Americans.  Heck, even gays are getting married in Iowa today.  And attitudes over wedge issues are changing rapidly.

I am a big proponent of diversity.  I really believe a healthy democracy consists of vibrant give and take between different views and values.  I am, frankly, saddened that the Republican Party can not seem to find it's way.  Losing one of it's best and most articulate Senators will not help this hapless party find a course that is closer to what Americans need and want right now.  So, while I seem to echo Senator McConnell in concerns about democracy, it isn't for the same reasons.  My concern is not about gaining power or preventing the use of power. It's about ensuring a robust democracy.

Senator Spector is by no means a "liberal."  I would suggest he will remain true to his past record and vote accordingly.  But his switch certainly is an indication that there are more serious problems for the Republican Party than we imagine.  But it is my hope that Senator Spector does remain true to his moderate leanings, encouraging other members of his new party to examine the critical issues of the day from all sides.

Holy cow!

Salaries and Bonuses? What?

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that banks and other financial institutions are returning to salary and bonus levels found in 2007.  Apparently, these institutions feel they are out of the financial mess they created!

Being blunt about this, this news is like hearing people on welfare get to set their own monthly payments.  While some of these financial institutions may be beginning to do well, they are certainly making profits only because of federal assistance whether it is Troubled Asset Relief Program money, the zero percent interest they are paying for borrowing money from the Federal Reserve or the reluctance by Congress to pass legislation which will restrict the usurious interest rates and lending practices established by banks.  Our financial institutions are the 21st Century version of welfare queens.

Apparently tomorrow there are going to be protests at Bank of America branches through out the country, asking for Ken Lewis's resignation.  We need more than that.  Congress has got to step up and enact legislation that regulates this industry and stand strong against their numerous lobbyists trying to quash the cram down revisions to the Bankruptcy laws.  Enough is enough.  

And what, just what are these salaries going for?

On Torture

I've been reluctant to wade into this discussion.  I am appalled at the acts of cruelty we can inflict as humans upon each other, among other things (don't get me started on animal cruelty).  This cuts all ways.  Hijacking planes and crashing them into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and attempting to crash one into presumably the White House is as much an act of cruelty and torture as waterboarding.  The intent and effect are the same: create fear and exercise power.

That said, I am pleased to see this issue so intensely debated in the public sphere right now.  But I am of two minds, or I should say, many minds.

I was not a policy maker in the post-September 11th moments.  When a nation looked to leadership on explaining how we could be attacked in such a brazen and clearly well thought out way by a loose organization based in the remote mountains of Afghanistan.  There is no way I could know the decision making process that went through American national security agencies on how to find the people, still alive, responsible for the attacks, much less find the "cells" who may be plotting even more strikes against a clearly vulnerable nation.  But the emotions in those security agencies must have ranged from anger, grief, fear, and more anger.

Torture is a reflection of inhumanity but it is also caused by anger.  Anger is, unfortunately, a human emotion we have all felt and expressed, over time, in ways we have regretted.  And the policy makers, from lawyers who wrote memos condoning the use of torture to the officials who asked the lawyers to produce those memos, were angry.  

Anger does not justify a crime.  

But it seems to me there are so many people, so many policy-makers, from Republicans to Democrats, who knew about these methods, knew they were being used, and whether overtly or covertly, condoned the actions.  To prosecute may mean taking down the whole policy-maker infrastructure of Washington, DC.  Housecleaning like that may be a good thing, but is it necessary?  And what are the long term consequences of prosecuting ex post facto methods done in good faith to protect American citizens?  Does that open the door for future Administrations to prosecute former Administrative officials for acts they deem illegal?  Is that what we want?  It seems if that happens we are not that different than nations we condemn in Africa, Asia, South America...

On the other hand, it seems to me that understanding the motivations, the reasoning behind the authorization of these methods would be helpful.  South Africa had enormous success with Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.  But the key is reconciliation.  Once the information is out, we need to forgive, to understand, to reconcile.  We were all angry after September 11, 2001.

President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are against this sort of commission.  Probably because they are aware almost every one in Washington, DC would be implicated.  But, if we truly reconcile, perhaps it will make those same folks even better leaders and us, better citizens.

Remember AIG?

Great short piece on AIG in yesterday's New York Times.  Essentially, in the negotiations over who was going to run AIG and how it was going to be managed, AIG beat the federal government.  We have loaned AIG billions and billions of dollars with no control over spending, much less management of this insurance behemoth.  

I think about my father, giving me an allowance.  Every week he would go over how I was going to spend the money, line by line, down to the candy I snuck from a local dime store.  But here, we lend money without any clue how to retain control.

And really the issue isn't the bonuses or the past, it's about the future.  It's whether this company can manage it's way out of a paper bag from here on in.  In a larger context is whether our government is being consistent in the micro-managing of the Chrysler and GM and yet hands off of the very culprits who were in the epicenter of this financial tornado.  While we can heap blame over the futurists at GM, Chrysler, and Ford not seeing an end to cheap oil and building smaller, more fuel efficient cars (and hello, who bought those cars?), 99.9% of the blame for this depression lies at the wing-tipped feet of the financial industry.  Yet they still seem amazingly in control of their daily work world and continue to lobby Congress and the Administration for lax regulation on them and tough bankruptcy laws on the very victims of their follies.  

What is up with that?

Every Day is Earth Day

There is a bumper sticker that the Society of American Foresters sells to it's members: Every Day Is Earth Day for a Forester.  It's slightly defensive, but makes a critical point.  Every day should be Earth Day for each of us.

We are caught in an interesting time for environmental policy and politics.  We have a President and Congress who seem motivated to "do something" on top of the list environmental issues like, well, er, global climate change.  Global warming, as it is called in the popular media, is the darling of politicians.  Primarily because "doing something" can appeal to so many constituencies.  There can be jobs created doing "green technologies," or "green building."  Legislation can be passed requiring regulations to be promulgated, hence creating more governmental jobs monitoring emissions.  And we can still keep our lifestyle as long as we are consuming "green."

But talk has been and continues to be all we seem to do.  Frankly, technological "solutions" often contribute to the problem rather than the solution.  So-called green buildings actually require destruction of a current structure, contributing to the waste stream.  How about green restoration?  And encouraging people to consume as long as it's green?  How about not consuming.  Those reusable bags from China probably do far more damage to the environment than driving to the grocery store!

Here in the Pacific Northwest we have been talking about salmon restoration for decades, and still the numbers decline because of lack of political will and constituency demand.  We tinker at the edges while advocating the use of hydroelectric power, generated by massive dams along the Columbia River, one of the major spawning waterways for salmon.  Google, claiming they are the premier environmental company ("do no evil") recently located a massive server farm, using huge amounts of electricity, near The Dalles, in Oregon, which is directly across from a massive power generating dam.  Google gets cheap power, salmon die.  Go figure.

The same thing is true for the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, the two premier estuaries in the continent.  Both have been major environmental concerns for decades, yet we continue to overdevelop the adjacent lands (with built green homes, no less) pouring massive amounts of toxic run-off into the waters.  The two estuaries, once filled with lively fisheries and amazingly fresh water, are ecological nightmares.  But we sure love to talk about it.

We have a long long way to go before we can say that every day is Earth Day.  The current economic depression (there, I said it) trumps environmental concerns for most Americans.  The good news is that perhaps as we scratch our heads and examine how we spent our way into this mess, we realize that spending our way out of it might not work.  And that, alone, will go along way for Earth!

As an aside, I want to direct you to the Frontline piece done by Heddrick Smith on the Chesapeake and Puget Sound.  You can find the link to the video by clicking on the title to this post.