What I'd rather be thinking about

Eighteen years in the making, tomorrow I am going to complete the goal of climbing all 48 4000 foot mountains in the Granite State. As goals go, it is not all that meaningful an objective, except that the older I grow the harder these mountains are to hike. My 47th climb, last month, was especially brutal, taking me nearly 12 hours to bag Mt. Isolation. Fittingly, I did the hike alone. A half a day hiking alone in the woods gives one plenty of time to think.

Now this kind of hiking is not like an Everest Expedition, but it still requires a fair amount of planning. Weather plays a huge part, of course, as it dictates what clothing and other gear is necessary. Can I find potable water, or must I carry enough for my needs? Is my map up-to-date? Is there a current trail report available to assist in my preparations? Am I fit enough to enjoy the hike, or should I postpone until I can get a few more sessions in the gym? How much food to bring, what safety equipment to bring in the event that I am benighted? Batteries? First Aid kit? Having done 47 of these hikes, I learned that rational planning enhances the chances for success. Because I plan, I've never had any serious difficulties, save for a couple of exposed above tree-line hikes in terrible thunderstorms. I am honest about my abilities, and have even turned back just short of a summit when the weather suddenly turned dangerous. Of course this required trying for those peaks again.

Instead of continuing my preparations for my Mount Cabot hike, I logged into the New York Times this morning. My favorite prize-winning economist opines about the latest GOP folly, its new published agenda to be enacted if it should return to power. It is the very antithesis of careful planning, a fantasy document more attuned with magical thinking than rational policy making. Replete with Reagan era wishful thinking about the evil of Big Government it seeks to return America to the age of Herbert Hoover. Newt Gingrich pulled this trick in 1994, and his successors hope to fool the voting public again. I would never trust these cats to plan one of my hikes, let alone plan for my country.

Empty premium seating and tax cuts for the rich

News that neither the Giants nor the Jets sold all the available seats for their respective opening games of the season reminds us that even the affluent are feeling the effects of the recession. Shall we thus extend the Bush tax cuts, as the GOP (otherwise known as "the party of the rich") would prefer? After all, public dollars were used to build this massive sports palace (just as in the case of the new Yankees' stadium). So why shouldn't we use the same logic to help the teams full the stadium?

How to kill Big Government - libertarian - style

Since the rise of Ronald Reagan, the GOP has been the party of fantasy. It has pushed for smaller government, arguing that this will free Americans from tyranny. Extolling the virtues of the Founding Fathers, Reagan and his successors (including the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney) have sold Americans on the myth that you can have everything: tax cuts and public services, guns and butter. Libertarians now own the GOP, and while they cannot win elections under their own banner (see Ed Clark - David H. Koch of Koch Industries ticket, 1980; Ron Paul for President, 2008) they have managed a complete take-over of the Grand Old Party.

Reagan and his acolytes pushed a program that has come to be known as "starving the beast". In the words of the anti-tax conservative zealot Grover Norquist, the goal is to make government small enough that it can be "drowned in a bath tub". Norquist, forever tainted by his association with the felon Jack Abramoff, continues to hold his weekly meetings for conservative players in D.C., where they hatch their plans to "take back America". (more on Norquist in a future post). Somehow they have convinced many Americans to ignore the folly of 96 months of Bush-Cheney policies. All that is wrong with America is the result of 18 months of Obama-Biden.

So what about those 96 months of "starving the beast". The surplus is long gone, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the military became the most successful jobs program in the nation. I like Frank Rich's take on this, as published in the New York Times today.

Conservatives on the attack

Republicans have been trying to kill Social Security since its birth. The program's success undermines their ideological belief that government by definition can do nothing right. Today Paul Krugman examines the math behind their claim that the program faces financial deficit unless something is done to trim benefits. Let us hope that Congress reads The New York Times.

Raising the retirement age or cutting the benefit pay-out are the reforms favored by the Right. Of course, another way to react to a supposed looming deficit would be to lift the cap on earnings from its current level of $106, 800. Or, we could reduce our bloated defense budget and re-direct the savings to Social Security.

Unfortunate timing

Just as Congress leaves for its summer recess, two government reports have been issued concerning global warming. In the year of the great Gulf of Mexico Oil Well Catastrophe, in a decade that continues to be much warmer than normal, in a time when the planet's atmosphere is perhaps at the tipping point toward a larger catastrophe, Congress was unable to pass a modest carbon tax. Conservatives - Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats - simply cannot summon the will to address this issue. As any student of the American legislative process knows, the Congress will always take the path of least resistance. With campaign donations from the carbon industry in play, legislators seem unwilling to address our larger needs in this mid-term election year. Until the public opinion is marshaled to do battle with the deniers and their corporate sponsors, the planet will continue to bake.

How did the climate change deniers come to dominate the discourse? No doubt economic insecurity is a factor: with unemployment numbers still rising, public sentiment can easily be marshaled to oppose anything that might cost coal miners and oil rig drillers some jobs. But the famed "paranoid style of American politics" phenomenon may also be at work. As Richard Hofstadter famously articulated in his seminal work, Americans have a long history of courting the irrational in our politics. It is so much easier to give in to the paranoia than to reason together. No wonder Congress was so hot to get out of town.

Let the market place decide

Today Paul Krugman identifies who is to blame for the failed cap and trade legislation. In his New York Times op-ed piece he skewers the usual suspects, delightfully eviscerating the maverick, John McCain. But his comments about the culpability of the energy industry are especially interesting. He points out that EM actively supports climate change deniers. This is evidently a well-known fact about the company - witness this article from the U.K. Guardian last year. But it was news to me.

The only way to change such corporate misbehavior is to affect the company's bottom line. I will no longer purchase its products: I estimate that I buy about $1800 worth of its gasoline a year. Driving less and walking and biking more more have failed to impress EM. Contributing money to environmental groups hasn't moved the company either. Today I will cut this credit card in half and mail it to the company to protest its hypocrisy.

Imagine what a market-place solution to climate change might look like. I imagine that Nike and Adidas are already working on wearable air-conditioned suits for comfort in the coming dystopia (picture a lighter weight version of the outfit Neil Armstrong wore as he stepped onto the moon). But what if we could change corporate behavior before things get much worse?

I wish I could cut the deniers in half, too. Don't they have children (and grandchildren?)

Faux News

Today I reported as spam an opinion expressed about an editorial in The Boston Globe. I did so because the writer suggested a link to the Wall Street Journal to back up the claim that there is no such thing as global warming. You might think my reaction extreme, but it is has been some time now since the WSJ could be considered a reputable news source. Purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation a couple of years ago, it can no longer be seen as a serious source for reputable journalism. You see, it is tainted by association with another holding of the company, Fox News.

Journalists are not supposed to have an agenda. Journalists who twist the facts to fit that agenda should be fired. As that is par-for the course at Fox, however, no one is ever removed for violating the journalistic canon. Witness the contretemps over the Shirley Sherrod story. Fox News is an infotainment outlet. It's employees are masters of the procrustean argument. The company, owned by an extremely wealthy Australian conservative has an ax to grind, an agenda to push. It is a willing servant of the Republican party, of the tea-baggers and the right wing of the American political spectrum. It is to journalism what BP is to environmentalism.