Archive | December, 2011

Letters at 3AM: Occupy the Future

20 Dec

It is not my place to speak for Occupy, but I’ll use my own “people’s mic” to offer a proposal: that Occupy demands a constitutional amendment to reverse Supreme Court decisions that have given corporations the rights of citizens. Carefully craft this amendment to make clear, beyond doubt, that a corporation does not enjoy or deserve the constitutional rights of a citizen. Rather, a for-profit corporation is a commercial venture subject to the republic’s laws governing commerce. This amendment must state and enforce that corporations are not people.

Change the Supreme Court’s stance that corporations are people and you change the fundamental rule under cover of which corporations conduct themselves. The passage of such an amendment would go a very long way toward getting corporate money out of American politics.

via Letters at 3AM: Occupy the Future – Columns – The Austin Chronicle.

Embracing Impermanence: Why Some Architecture Should Be Temporary – NYTimes.com

20 Dec

Kronenburg made a compelling argument that the experimentation inherent in such structures challenges preconceived notions about what buildings can and should be. The strategy of temporality, he explained, “adapts to unpredictable demands, provides more for less, and encourages innovation.” And he stressed that it’s time for end-users, designers, architects, manufacturers and construction firms to rethink their attitude toward temporary, portable and mobile architecture.

This is as true for development and city planning as it is for architecture. City-making may have happened all at once at the desks of master planners like Daniel Burnham or Robert Moses, but that’s really not the way things happen today. No single master plan can anticipate the evolving and varied needs of an increasingly diverse population or achieve the resiliency, responsiveness and flexibility that shorter-term, experimental endeavors can.

via Embracing Impermanence: Why Some Architecture Should Be Temporary – NYTimes.com.

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And if the Newt free-fall doesn’t stop… – Opening Shot – Salon.com

19 Dec

New Iowa data from Public Policy Polling released overnight show the former House speaker plummeting to third place in the lead-off caucus state, with just 14 percent of the vote. The new Iowa leader, according to PPP, is Ron Paul with 23 percent, followed by Mitt Romney at 20. At the national level, the latest numbers from Gallup’s daily tracking poll have Gingrich nursing a 4-point lead over Romney, 28-24 percent — a far cry from the 38-23 percent advantage he enjoyed in the same poll just over a week ago. Paul is at 10 percent in that survey.

via And if the Newt free-fall doesn’t stop… – Opening Shot – Salon.com.

Don’t Tax the Rich. Tax Inequality Itself. – NYTimes.com

19 Dec

Congress should reform our tax law to put the brakes on further inequality. Specifically, we propose an automatic extra tax on the income of the top 1 percent of earners — a tax that would limit the after-tax incomes of this club to 36 times the median household income.

Importantly, our Brandeis tax does not target excessive income per se; it only caps inequality. Billionaires could double their current income without the tax kicking in — as long as the median income also doubles. The sky is the limit for the rich as long as the “rising tide lifts all boats.” Indeed, the tax gives job creators an extra reason to make sure that corporate wealth does in fact trickle down.

via Don’t Tax the Rich. Tax Inequality Itself. – NYTimes.com.

Community Bands in America

18 Dec

In 19th century America, the community band was at the center of community life. Here’s a documentary about them:

Meet The Band, a Hindsight Media production, is a one-hour documentary tracing the history of community bands n the United States. We profile four very different bands from around the country and takes us through the American Revolution, the Civil War and the 20th century.

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Warming Arctic Permafrost Fuels Climate Change Worries – NYTimes.com

17 Dec

The problem of atmospheric carbon (CO2 and methane) may be much worse than we’d feared:

Experts have long known that northern lands were a storehouse of frozen carbon, locked up in the form of leaves, roots and other organic matter trapped in icy soil — a mix that, when thawed, can produce methane and carbon dioxide, gases that trap heat and warm the planet. But they have been stunned in recent years to realize just how much organic debris is there.

A recent estimate suggests that the perennially frozen ground known as permafrost, which underlies nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere….

If that permafrost melts because of global warming, it will release even more carbon gases into the atmosphere and so further accelerate global warming in a vicious cycle of positive feedback.

The experts also said that if humanity began getting its own emissions under control soon, the greenhouse gases emerging from permafrost could be kept to a much lower level, perhaps equivalent to 10 percent of today’s human emissions.

Even at the low end, these numbers mean that the long-running international negotiations over greenhouse gases are likely to become more difficult, with less room for countries to continue burning large amounts of fossil fuels.

In the minds of most experts, the chief worry is not that the carbon in the permafrost will break down quickly — typical estimates say that will take more than a century, perhaps several — but that once the decomposition starts, it will be impossible to stop.

via Warming Arctic Permafrost Fuels Climate Change Worries – NYTimes.com.

Is Indian Point the Next Fukushima? – NYTimes.com

17 Dec

The lack of attention to possible land contamination is a major gap in the American system of nuclear safety regulation. After Fukushima, it should be the main safety concern — and one that is not addressed by evacuation, no matter how efficient….

The essential characteristic of this technology is that the reactor’s uranium fuel — about 100 tons in a typical plant — melts quickly without cooling water. The containment structures surrounding the reactors — even the formidable-looking domes at Indian Point — were not designed to hold melted fuel because safety regulators 40 years ago considered a meltdown impossible.

They were wrong, and we now know that radioactive material in the melted fuel can escape to contaminate a very large area for decades or more.

via Is Indian Point the Next Fukushima? – NYTimes.com.

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Occupy the Safety Net | The Nation

15 Dec

Here is where the movement to end poverty could gain inspiration from the proudly unprofessional activists who have seized spaces and occupied the national discourse these past few months. Historically, like OWS, successful poor people’s movements have preferred justice to charity, pursuing goals set not by policy shops but by the people who know most intimately what kind of change they need, and on whose vigorous participation the movement depends. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act in 1964 as part of his War on Poverty, it contained a provision calling for “maximum feasible participation” of the poor—a provision that “grew out of the mass civil rights mobilizations in the 1950s and early 1960s that, with blood and sacrifice, had won basic political rights for African Americans across the South,” writes historian Annelise Orleck in her introduction to The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980. The law secured funding for more than 1,000 community action agencies across the country, which helped engage and politicize poor mothers, who fought many battles over the ensuing decade for better food, schools and healthcare for their families (and won some of them). Imagine that: a president signing a law that asked for, even paid for, grassroots participation to shape policies and decide priorities. It sounds utopian now—even under a president who once worked as a community organizer—but as OWS has reminded us, sometimes the size of the demand is the measure of a movement.

via Occupy the Safety Net | The Nation.

Scaling the Peak: Some New Englanders are running out of winter fuel

15 Dec

In Ripton we built an assistance program called REAP. On our own we find good wood, haul it to a town shed, cut it up, then stack the pieces in an accessible location. Here’s a post on doing some of that community work.

If we’re in a national economic crisis, this kind of local, grass-roots, peer-to-peer mutual aid is essential. Hopefully we’ll see it grow, as “outside” support declines.

via Scaling the Peak: Some New Englanders are running out of winter fuel.

Ron Paul For The GOP Nomination – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast

14 Dec

And I see in Paul none of the resentment that burns in Gingrich or the fakeness that defines Romney or the fascistic strains in Perry’s buffoonery. He has yet to show the Obama-derangement of his peers, even though he differs with him. He has now gone through two primary elections without compromising an inch of his character or his philosophy. This kind of rigidity has its flaws, but, in the context of the Newt Romney blur, it is refreshing…. When he answers a question, you can see that he is genuinely listening to it and responding – rather than searching, Bachmann-like, for the one-liner to rouse the base. He is, in other words, a decent fellow, and that’s an adjective I don’t use lightly. …

And on some core issues, he is right. He is right that spending – especially on entitlements and defense – is way out of control. …

I don’t believe Romney or Gingrich would cut entitlements as drastically as Paul. But most important, I don’t believe that any of the other candidates, except perhaps Huntsman, would cut the military-industrial complex as deeply as it needs to be cut. What Paul understands – and it’s why he has so much young support – is that the world has changed. Seeking global hegemony in a world of growing regional powers among developing nations is a fool’s game, destined to provoke as much backlash as lash, and financially disastrous as every failed empire in history has shown.

via Ron Paul For The GOP Nomination – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

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