The people of Amwell are no strangers to the price of development — the loss of a farm’s spring, the sinking of a family home when the coal mine burrows beneath it — or the price of its absence — shuttered mills and lost jobs. But given our energy needs, the use of fracking and the number of wells are likely to grow. The question is whether regulations to address environmental and health issues can keep pace with a booming industry.
Archive | November, 2011
The Fracturing of Pennsylvania – NYTimes.com
21 NovThe roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying – Salon.com
20 NovThe protest movement is driving the proliferation of new forms of activism, citizen passion and courage, and — most important of all — a sense of possibility. For the first time in a long time, the use of force and other forms of state intimidation are not achieving their intended outcome of deterring meaningful (i.e., unsanctioned and unwanted) citizen activism, but are, instead, spurring it even more. The state reactions to these protests are both highlighting pervasive abuses of power and generating the antidote: citizen resolve to no longer accept and tolerate it.
On the March
20 NovI’ve got another case to add to those in my earlier post on intuition and the sense of reality. This case arose in a long, and often interesting, discussion of the recent evictions of Occupy Wall Street encampments. The discussion has been taking place at Crooked Timber and has involved, among other things, a fairly extensive conversation between one Adrian Kelleher, about whom I know nothing, and Rich Puchalsky, whom I know from The Valve and CT.
Kelleher has been making long, detailed comments saying, more or less, “you’re doing it wrong, you can’t possibly succeed.” Puchalsky, who’s been working with the Occupy group in his neighborhood somewhere in in not-Boston Massachusetts, has been saying, “you don’t at all understand the Occupy movement.” In particular, Kelleher made two long comments, 333 and, particularly 334, which is about how OWS is swimming against “the tide of history.” Puchalsky responds in 341.
Here’s my reply to Puchalsky:
Puchalsky: It’s possible for someone to have quite conventional political views and yet act quite differently within a social situation that is different.
BB: Bingo!
Puchalsky: When that failure happens, people in OWS will have friends that they can trust, people who they’ve worked with at a very elemental level.
BB: Bingo! Bingo!BB: Let me invoke Marley’s Theorem, named after my old buddy Jason Marley: “If you want to know what it’s like to drive a car, you’ve got to sit in the driver’s set and drive the car.” Sitting in the passenger’s seat watching the driver won’t do it, nor will sitting in the back seat, and certainly not sitting at home in your den imagining what driving a car is like. You’ve got to be IN the car, making decisions about traffic, the road, and pedestrians. It’s that elemental.
That last paragraph is where we get the intersection with my earlier remarks about intuition. Puchalsky is IN the OWS movement and so understands it from the inside; he’s in the driver’s seat. Kelleher, apparently, is not. Continue reading
Occupy the Agenda – NYTimes.com
19 NovA reporter for Politico found that use of the words “income inequality” quintupled in a news database after the Occupy protests began. That’s a significant achievement, for this is an issue that goes to our country’s values and our opportunities for growth — and yet we in the news business have rarely given it the attention it deserves.
Occupy Wall Street Protesters, Even in Churches, Can’t Escape Watch of Police – NYTimes.com
19 NovSeveral area churches have been sheltering protesters in the days since the city banned sleeping in Zuccotti Park, and church officials said they were alarmed by the idea that the police might be monitoring their conduct.
“It is disconcerting that they would actually enter the sanctuary,” said the Rev. James Karpen, known as Reverend K, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, on West 86th Street. “Here we had offered hospitality and safety, which is our business as a church; it just felt invasive.”
via Occupy Wall Street Protesters, Even in Churches, Can’t Escape Watch of Police – NYTimes.com.
Ron Paul Gaining Momentum From Niche Voters in Iowa Polls – NYTimes.com
19 NovIn a year when the Republican field is unusually fractured, with front-runners coming around as often as carousel ponies, Mr. Paul’s ability to mobilize niche groups like home-schoolers may make a big difference. His campaign, which has won a number of straw polls and is picking up momentum, has demonstrated its ability to organize and mobilize supporters, which is particularly relevant in Iowa, where relatively small numbers can tip the scales in the caucuses. …
But now, thanks to the best organized grass-roots campaign in Iowa and heavy spending on television advertisements that portray him as consistent while other Republicans have flip-flopped, Mr. Paul is breaking through that ceiling, giving rise to a once far-fetched scenario — that he might win the state’s caucuses on Jan. 3.
“I’m buying Ron Paul today,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director for the Republican Party of Iowa, who on Wednesday sent a Twitter message saying, “Ron Paul’s Iowa Campaign Office was abuzz at 8 p.m. tonight when I drove by on my way to the bank. Impressive.”
Two state polls this week show him in a statistical tie for first. One, released Monday by Bloomberg News, showed Mr. Paul winning 19 percent of likely Republican caucus voters, within the margin of error with Herman Cain, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
via Ron Paul Gaining Momentum From Niche Voters in Iowa Polls – NYTimes.com.
A Horrific Crash Sets Off Online Anger in China – NYTimes.com
19 NovAs China sped toward its new status as the world’s second largest economy, the already yawning gap between the rich and poor grew wider. By sociologists’ calculations, income inequality here is not that far from levels that have spurred social unrest in other nations.
But some things are not easily reduced to statistics. There is an argument, buttressed by the Gansu tragedy, that what truly eats at people here is not so much the rich-poor gap as the canyon that separates the powerful from the powerless.
“Most Chinese aren’t angry about rising inequality,” said Martin K. Whyte, a Harvard sociologist who specializes in research on Chinese social trends. “It’s not rich versus poor. It’s the system of power and procedural injustices that they’re upset about.”
And in fact, many episodes in the litany of scandal and misfortune that has consumed Chinese Web surfers in recent years had little to do with money.
via A Horrific Crash Sets Off Online Anger in China – NYTimes.com.
Insight: The Wall Street disconnect | Reuters
19 NovWith U.S. cities moving this week to crack down on Occupy Wall Street encampments – including the one in New York’s Zuccotti Park – the staying power of the movement is in question. Whatever its future, it’s clear that so far, the Occupiers haven’t changed many minds on Wall Street over blame for the country’s hard times. The cognitive disconnect between the protesters and the captains of finance is alive and well.
David Mooney, chief executive officer of Alliant Credit Union in Chicago, one of the nation’s larger credit unions, used to work at one of Wall Street’s top banks, JPMorgan Chase. There’s a vast cultural gap between Wall Street and his new world, he says: Old friends from the Street, he says, now jokingly refer to him as a “socialist.” A credit union is supposed to be run in the interests of all members, he says, while commercial bankers tend to see consumers as customers who can be “exploited” by layering on more fees.
The NYPD has discredited itself – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com
18 NovAs Occupy Wall Street grew, the New York Police Department’s “crowd control” tactics became increasingly bizarre and aggressive: historic mass arrests, motor scooter attacks, destruction of books, ramming horses into demonstrators, putting New York Post reporters in choke holds – to name only a few. And following Tuesday’s brazen raid of Zuccotti Park, carried out in the dead of night, the NYPD indicated that de-escalation is not on the horizon. Quite the opposite, in fact. Police officials at the highest ranks, under the direction of Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, have taken to simply making up the rules as they go along.
In the same way that financial elites rig the political system, law enforcement elites like Bloomberg and Kelly have rigged the criminal justice system. Occupy Wall Street is hardly the only victim. The NYPD is on pace to make 700,000 extralegal “stop-and-frisks” this year alone, while its own officers skirt accountability for their misconduct.
via The NYPD has discredited itself – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.
Truth and Traditions 