‘Big Government’ Isn’t the Problem, Big Money Is | The Nation

23 Mar

Too many institutions are too big. Bigness always grows until it falls apart. Bigness Fails.

Homeowners can’t use bankruptcy to reorganize their mortgage loans because the banks have engineered laws to prohibit this. Banks have also made it extremely difficult for young people to use bankruptcy to reorganize their student loans. Yet corporations routinely use bankruptcy to renege on contracts. American Airlines, which is in bankruptcy, plans to fire 13,000 people—
16 percent of its workforce—while cutting back health benefits for current employees. It also intended to terminate its underfunded pension plans, until the government agency charged with picking up the tab screamed so loudly that American backed off and proposed to freeze the plans.

Not a day goes by without Republicans decrying the budget deficit. But its biggest driver is Big Money’s corruption of Washington. One of the federal budget’s largest and fastest-growing programs is Medicare, whose costs would be far lower if drug companies reduced their prices. It hasn’t happened because Big Pharma won’t allow it. Medicare’s administrative costs are only 3 percent, far below the 10 percent average of private insurers. So it would be logical to tame rising healthcare costs by allowing any family to opt in. That was the idea behind the “public option.” But health insurers stopped it in its tracks.

via ‘Big Government’ Isn’t the Problem, Big Money Is | The Nation.

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How the rich took over airport security – Transportation Security Administration – Salon.com

23 Mar

Score another win for the Corpstate. The war on terror is a scam to funnel more tax money into the military-industrial complex and to exert more and tighter control over US citizens. Now the rich are being given free front-row seats at TSA security theater in airports. Airlines allow fatcats to go to the head of the line and the government’s testing a program that does the same.

In other words, if you do not fly frequently — and most low-income and middle-income Americans cannot afford to — you would not be allowed to take part in this public government program. In true crony capitalist fashion, the precheck program blurs the line between the government’s security function and the airlines’ purely commercial frequent flier programs.

The precheck program is advertised as an experimental program, holding out the possibility that after a period in which they are subject to more scrutiny than affluent business travelers, low-income grandmothers traveling to visit their grandchildren at last will be able to take part. More likely, the precheck program would never be extended to the masses rather than the classes. It would simply become another permanent perk of the elite, whose members would have no incentive to lobby for democratizing the program — rather the contrary.

via How the rich took over airport security – Transportation Security Administration – Salon.com.

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As Nuclear Reactors Age, Funds to Close Them Lag – NYTimes.com

22 Mar

Shutting down nuclear plants is very expensive, even more expensive than building them in the first place. It’s not a simple matter of turning off the switch. You do that, and then you have to dismantle the plant and haul the nuclear waste away. Once you’ve done that, the land can be returned to productive use. If you don’t properly dismantle, then the land is useless and the radioactive waste is still dangerous.

In effect, these plants are Too Big To Be Turned Off. And they’re Too Dangerous to Operate. Seems to me we’re living Too Big to Be Responsible.

Entergy is at least $90 million short of the projected $560 million cost of dismantling Vermont Yankee; the company is at least $500 million short of the $1.5 billion estimated cost of dismantling Indian Point 2 and 3.

The shortfall raises the possibility that Vermont could tend one sleeping reactor for decades while New York oversees three; Unit 1 , another reactor at Indian Point, shut down in 1974 and has yet to be dismantled.

Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s chairman is uneasy about the prospect of a 60-year wait.

“These facilities should be cleaned up, and their footprints reduced as much as possible so that these areas can be returned to other productive uses within the community,” the chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, said recently.

Gil C. Quiniones, the president and chief executive of the New York Power Authority, a state utility that sold Indian Point 3 to Entergy in 2000, called Entergy’s failure to plan for or finance the decommissioning of Indian Point in real time “stunningly irresponsible.”

via As Nuclear Reactors Age, Funds to Close Them Lag – NYTimes.com.

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Open Letter to Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich: Come Together, Right Now

20 Mar

Dear Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich,

I urge you to put your respective strengths together on a firm foundation built by back-to-basics Austrian and Buddhist economics. A casual reading of G. Bateson, E. F. Schumacher, John Ruskin, anyone who has thought long and hard about the profound evil embodied in “central banking,” war preparations and “Fed manipulations” everywhere, will give you the tools and bricks you need to build a Reform Party and/or an Americans Elect TEAM based on emergent truths and the oldest traditions.

At the Truth & Traditions party website (cranks and planks without a platform or an actual political party) you will find arguments, positions, reports, a Declaration of Interdependence, some of what you will need to create a balanced platform and a beyond-bi-partisan Sunshine Cabinet whose members and many surrogates can campaign with you this summer and fall.

The key to this Sunshine Cabinet is the creation of a Peace Department (Kucinich in charge?) and an Ecology Department (Bill McKibben or Andrew Kimbrell in charge?), each department NEVER to exceed a size sustainable by a quarter of one percent of the current Defense Department budget. In truth, each department needs only a few dozen people to gather up the long-term thinking and best practices of diverse Great Transition communities, colleges, universities, institutes, limited and democratic governments around the world that work for the best interests of their peoples. These two very small and extremely cost-effective departments can shape and pass on as many proposals to Congress, Executive and Judicial branches as are needed. Continue reading →

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The States Get a Poor Report Card – NYTimes.com

20 Mar

The principle of breaking up the Federal Government and turning programs over to the states is a good one. The problem, alas, is that state governments are corrupt, too. The Corpstate is everywhere.

And yet all the Republican presidential candidates think it would be a good idea to hand some of Washington’s most important programs to state governments, which so often combine corruptibility with incompetence. In a speech on Monday, Mitt Romney said he would dump onto the states most federal anti-poverty programs, including Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance, because states know best what their local needs are.

States, however, generally have a poor record of taking care of their neediest citizens, and could not be relied on to maintain lifeline programs like food stamps if Washington just wrote them checks and stopped paying attention. In many states, newspapers and broadcasters have cut their statehouse coverage, reducing scrutiny of government’s effectiveness and integrity.

via The States Get a Poor Report Card – NYTimes.com.

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Keystone pipeline will spill, study predicts – Keystone XL pipeline – Salon.com

19 Mar

The already existing Keystone I pipeline, which runs 2,100 miles from Alberta to Illinois, began operating in 2010; in the two years since, 35 spills have occurred. In the pipeline’s first year of operation alone, its spill rate was 100 times TransCanada’s projection. All told the amount of tar sands oil being transported through the United States has more than tripled in the past decade to 600,000 barrels in 2010. Keystone XL, if built, would add another 830,000 barrels per day.

John Stansbury, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Nebraska, analyzed spill data from the Keystone I pipeline to estimate that 91 spills would occur over the course of 50 years of Keystone XL’s operation — close to two spills each year. In a worst-case scenario, he says, a spill could contaminate 4.9 billion gallons of groundwater in Nebraska’s Sand Hills with benzene, a known carcinogen.

Those spills kill the land and thus kill the jobs that depend on the land.

via Keystone pipeline will spill, study predicts – Keystone XL pipeline – Salon.com.

Occupy! and Make Them Do It | The Nation

19 Mar

Protest movements raise the sharp and divisive issues that vague rhetoric is intended to obscure and avoid, and the urgency and militancy of the movement—with its marches, rallies, strikes and sit-ins—breaks the monopoly on political communication otherwise held by politicians and the media. Politicians trying to hold together unwieldy majorities and their big money backers strive to avoid divisive issues except in the haziest rhetorical terms. But movements—with the dramatic spectacles they create and the institutional disruptions they can cause—make that much harder. Movements work against politicians because they galvanize and polarize voters and threaten to cleave the majorities and wealthy backers that politicians work to hold together. But that doesn’t mean that movements are not involved with electoral politics. To the contrary, the great victories that have been won in the past were won precisely because politicians were driven to make choices in the form of policy concessions that would win back some voters, even at the cost of losing others.

via Occupy! and Make Them Do It | The Nation.

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Six Questions for Thomas Frank—By Simone Richmond (Harper’s Magazine)

18 Mar

The social contract of the prosperous and roughly democratic America I was born into has been coming apart for decades, but not for any straightforward reason like “it didn’t work.” It’s coming apart because certain people want it to come apart; because they stand to gain if it comes apart; and yet for them to pull it apart they have to have our consent.

via Six Questions for Thomas Frank—By Simone Richmond (Harper’s Magazine).

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Scores Arrested as the Police Clear Zuccotti Park – NYTimes.com

18 Mar

Scores were arrested Saturday night when protesters marked the 6month anniversary of the initial encampment in Zuccotti Park.

The movement was mainly quiet during the winter, but organizers said they were aiming for a springtime resurgence.

“It’s just a reminder that we’re here,” Brendan Burke said, as the crowd marched past the New York Stock Exchange. “It’s an opportunity to remind Wall Street that we aren’t going anywhere.”

In several respects, Saturday’s march was similar to the inaugural one. The crowd was small but spirited and marched past the bronze sculpture of a bull at Bowling Green, which had served as a mustering spot for the first march. Marchers were accompanied by police officers on foot and on scooters who at one point blocked access to Wall Street, just as they did on Sept. 17.

via Scores Arrested as the Police Clear Zuccotti Park – NYTimes.com.

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Forget the Money, Follow the Sacredness – NYTimes.com

18 Mar

Despite what you might have learned in Economics 101, people aren’t always selfish. In politics, they’re more often groupish. When people feel that a group they value — be it racial, religious, regional or ideological — is under attack, they rally to its defense, even at some cost to themselves. We evolved to be tribal, and politics is a competition among coalitions of tribes.

The key to understanding tribal behavior is not money, it’s sacredness. The great trick that humans developed at some point in the last few hundred thousand years is the ability to circle around a tree, rock, ancestor, flag, book or god, and then treat that thing as sacred. People who worship the same idol can trust one another, work as a team and prevail over less cohesive groups. So if you want to understand politics, and especially our divisive culture wars, you must follow the sacredness.

via Forget the Money, Follow the Sacredness – NYTimes.com.

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