The Myth in the Machine

Posted: February 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, Environment, Environmental Protection | Tags: | 15 Comments

Bostonboomer and I were perusing information on the Issa panel and committee on religious freedom and birth control yesterday. Their expert witness panel appeared to be a mix between the Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition.  Where were the women on this panel?  Is this really our government?  What’s going on in Torquemada’s–errr Issa’s–realm of influence these days?  BB has already regaled us on the crooked career and life of Issa whose business and career seems built on insurance fraud, car theft, and arson, so I won’t go there.  We have a whole tag dedicated to him that’s infinitely googleable. However I will express my utter surprise and contempt that a committee of the US House of Representatives and its web page seem to be more of a propaganda tool of right wing tropes than anything remotely informative or helpful. Issa appears to be the Republican Party’s budding little combination of Goebbels and Himmler.

Go there and you’ll see a youtube with a nice white lady saying her “choice” was taken away by the SEIU.   You’ll also see the Orwellian job creators DOT com that wants to know what kind of things are holding up your business.  I don’t suppose any answer pointing to a lack of customers with well-paying jobs gets much attention.  It also has a link to the Fast and Furious Witch Hunt. (No mention that this program had roots in the previous Republican administration, of course.) I had no idea that so much propaganda had crept into tax payer paid websites of congressional committees.  I expect propaganda on their Facebook pages.  But congressional committee pages with federal government addresses?  Please!!

In honor of Issa’s hunt for “experts” that agree with him, I thought I’d point out a Bloomberg Business article that shows how many jobs new government regulations can create in the economy.   The subtitle is “Vilified on the campaign trail, government rules often create as many jobs as they kill”. Nothing like a little truth and empirical research to shine the light on the Issa/Gingrich/Romney propaganda machine. It’s true that regulations on businesses can shift resources away from the regulated business.  That includes jobs, profits, capital, and executive perks.  However, that’s a one-sided notion.  Those resources don’t disappear into thin air.  They simply shift away from the business that’s regulated–most likely because it’s creating a social cost–to other businesses that can better use the resources or employ folks cleaning up and measuring the messes in the case of regulation of dirty industries like Coal and Oil.

“This rule is the most extensive intervention into the power market and job market that EPA has ever attempted to implement,” says Scott Segal, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani, which represents the utility Southern Co. (SO) He argues the regulation will “undermine job creation in the United States.”

Tell that to Cal Lockert, the vice-president of Breen Energy Solutions, a Pittsburgh manufacturer of equipment that absorbs acid gases to keep them from spilling out of smokestacks. Lockert spends his days persuading power companies that he can help them bring some of their oldest, dirtiest plants in line with the federal requirements. There’s been “a frenzy of engineering firms and utilities” calling him for demonstrations of his products, he says. He’s hired a dozen people in the past month and says he’s just getting started.

Nol-Tec Systems in Lino Lakes, Minn., also expects a boom in sales of its equipment, which uses baking soda to pull pollutants out of plant exhaust. Meanwhile, Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO) in Waltham, Mass., is building emission monitors that power plants will need to measure toxins under the new rules. The regulations “could easily add $50 million to $100 million dollars in revenue in a year or two years,” says Chief Executive Officer Marc Casper, “which is significant for a company like ours.” The Institute of Clean Air Companies, a trade association representing businesses that make products to reduce industrial emissions, forecasts the industry will add 300,000 jobs a year through 2017 as a result of the EPA rules.

This is the side of the story that rarely gets mentioned in Washington or on the campaign trail. In an election year that hinges on the economy, government rules have become politically toxic. President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, the massive Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and EPA clean air and water mandates come under frequent attack from Republicans who say burdensome regulations are stalling the nation’s recovery. In the GOP debates, the R-word is now habitually preceded by “job-killing,” as in Mitt Romney’s promise to put an end to “job-killing regulations.” Newt Gingrich refers to the EPA as a “job-killing regulatory engine.”

Romney and Gingrich aren’t wrong. Government regulations do kill jobs, often by the thousands. Although it’s too early to tell how many layoffs may result from health-care and Wall Street reforms, there is a body of research going back decades detailing what has happened time and time again when Washington handed down sweeping environmental regulations: Costs increased, prices went up, and workers were fired. Supporters and opponents of the EPA’s new power plant rules agree that they will almost certainly result in dozens of coal plants shutting down and hundreds of workers being laid off.

But that’s not the whole picture. Government employment figures also show that those same regulations usually wind up creating about as many jobs as they kill. “We find there is no net impact,” says Richard Morgenstern, the EPA’s director of policy analysis in the Reagan and Clinton Administrations and now a researcher with Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan energy think tank in Washington. “The job creation and the job destruction roughly cancel each other out.”

Businesses targeted for regulation create huge social costs that taxpayers are forced to pick up.  There are public health and safety costs, pollution and clean up costs, and many other costs.  Dirty industries do these because they can force their costs onto the back of the public.  They over produce their products and gobble up scare capital and productive resources because of they don’t realize the full costs of doing business.  Regulation pushes these costs back onto their businesses.  It also leads to “creative destruction” which is the Schumpeter idea that old, outdated technology must be replaced with better things to improve the long term performance of the economy.  Some times the discipline in key industries has to come from the government because of the monopoly power of the industry.  The energy industry is a prime example with its oligopoly over resource and product markets and the price inelastic nature of its demand.  This enables the industry to via for political power as well as allows it fight to maintain dominance.  In most of these cases, only technological developments break the monopoly/oligopoly.  When Carter deregulated the telecommunications industry it wasn’t really all that effective.  What really broke the back of the AT&T monopoly was the advances in communications technology.  Frequently, regulations allow access to the heart of the monopoly’s business so that more facile, advanced businesses can break apart this destructive market type. It transfers resources away from the inefficient market that pushes high social costs on to taxpayers and neighboring communities.

Here’s a study that you never hear coming from the Issa propaganda/witch hunt arm of the US House of Representatives.

In 2002, Morgenstern and his colleagues published a landmark study detailing the effects of regulations on jobs in four polluting industries: paper, plastics, petroleum, and iron and steel. Drawing on more than 10 years’ worth of U.S. Census data, the study found new regulations led to higher production costs that pushed up prices, resulting in lost sales and layoffs. Yet those job losses were offset by new jobs in pollution abatement. “There’s always someone who is helped and someone who is hurt,” says Roger Noll, director of the Program on Regulatory Policy at Stanford University. “Which is why you have to look at the net effect on the economy.”

The loss in the polluting industry is actually a good thing in terms of market economy’s because it’s usually related to market inefficiency and transferred costs of doing business.  BTW, this Stanford University think tank is not a hot bed of raging liberalism.  This is one of this policy areas where there are trade-offs.  This means changes create winners and losers.  The deal is that in most cases the job loss is minimal but overall market efficiency improves.  The true cost of the product is passed on to consumers which removes the subsidy to the consumers and producers of the product.  Again, the resources just go elsewhere and are employed more efficiently in newer businesses.  Oddly enough, this is what Romney frequently says he did in his corporate raider days.

The critique of regulations fits into a broader conservative narrative about government overreach. But it also comes after a string of disasters in recent years that were tied to government regulators falling short, including the financial crisis of 2008, the BP oil spill and the West Virginia mining accident last year.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that very few layoffs are caused principally by tougher rules.

Whenever a firm lays off workers, the bureau asks executives the biggest reason for the job cuts.

In 2010, 0.3 percent of the people who lost their jobs in layoffs were let go because of “government regulations/intervention.” By comparison, 25 percent were laid off because of a drop in business demand.

I’m really not sure how we can create responses and discussions to one-sided political narratives that are based more on ideological memes than facts.  It certainly doesn’t help when that one-sided narrative comes from our own government sites and servants.  Obviously, the inefficient, lop-sided markets create monopoly profits for the stakeholders and we see K street filled with lobbyists aimed at protecting the inefficient markets.  The stories from younger, inventive, upstart businesses without lobbyists and pet pundits and politicians have worthwhile narratives.  Too bad their lost in a fight for ideological purity instead of empirical truth. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we keep fighting the culture wars.  Voodoo economics narratives don’t hold up to inspection.

Friday Reads: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire Edition

Posted: February 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Environmental Protection, morning reads, unemployment | Tags: , | 31 Comments

Bonjour!

I think the season of the political lie is upon us.  I have never seen so many tired old tropes being trotted out on TV in all my years of fascination with the bloodsport of politics.  I’m going to try to concentrate on  folks out there fighting the memes and lies with facts.  My first selection is from Baseline Scenario.  Simon Johnson explains that unemployment insurance isn’t around to keep lazy people on extended vacations. In the process he takes on the lie that our government is broke.

Fire insurance is mostly sold by the private sector; unemployment insurance is “sold” by the government – because the private sector never performed this role adequately. The original legislative intent, reaffirmed over the years, is clear: Help people to help themselves in the face of shocks beyond their control.

But the severity and depth of our current recession raise an issue on a scale that we have literally not had to confront since the 1930s. What should we do when large numbers of people run out of standard unemployment benefits, much of which are provided at the state level, but still cannot find a job? At the moment, the federal government steps in to provide extended benefits.

In negotiations currently under way, House Republicans propose to cut back dramatically on these benefits, asserting that this will push people back to work and speed the recovery. Does this make sense, or is it bad economics, as well as being mean-spirited?

(For details on the current benefit situation, see this information from California, as well as this on the political background. After a two-month extension of benefits at the end of last year, the terms of continuing it are currently before a House-Senate conference committee.)

The United States has lost more jobs than in any other recession in the last 70 years – and jobs have been slower to return, as this chart shows.

In raw numbers, we lost more than eight million jobs, most of which have not returned. Paul Solman of the PBS NewsHour prefers a measure he calls U-7, which includes “the underemployed and those who want a job but have been out of work so long that the government no longer counts them; this currently stands at 16.9 percent of the workforce (see this story and also, for background, a discussion Paul and I had in the fall on the “shape” of the recovery, in which we rely on the B.L.S. data.)

However you want to count it, the financial crisis of 2008 brought on a jobs disaster — and the scale of this disaster is still with us. We like to say that the recession is “over,” but this just means that the economy is growing again. In no meaningful sense is the jobs crisis over.

Typically in the United States, most people are unemployed for relatively short periods of time, with a lot of movement in and out of unemployment. The fraction of long-term unemployed as a percentage of all unemployed is usually 10 to 15 percent. In the early 1980s, it briefly reached almost 25 percent.

Again, however, our experience since 2008 has been dramatically different – the share of long-term unemployed in total unemployed is close to 45 percent. And it appears to be staying at or near that level for the foreseeable future.

The House Republicans now propose to change many rules under which the federal government provides “extended benefits” to people who have exhausted their state benefits.

In most countries, unemployment insurance is managed primarily by the central government and its agencies – in our federal structure we have preferred, as with other kinds of emergencies (such as natural disasters) to have the states provide the first line of defense, with the federal government providing back-up. It is the federal government that has the strongest ability to borrow at low interest rates; most states are much more strapped for cash.

Do not be deceived by claims that the federal government is “broke,” in the sense that it cannot afford to provide additional support to states and people at this level. This is a myth, pure and simple.

Paul Krugman takes on Charles Murray’s new whine about declining morality in the poor down trodden white folks and how it’s hurting our country.  Krugman shows that one of the traditional measures of social problems is teenage pregnancy and it’s way down.  So, is violent crime.  So what is it that Murray is really complaining about?

Reading Charles Murray and all the commentary about the sources of moral collapse among working-class whites, I’ve had a nagging question: is it really all that bad?

I mean, yes, marriage rates are way down, and labor force participation is down among prime-age men (although not as much as some of the rhetoric might imply), But it’s generally left as an implication that these trends must be causing huge social ills. Are they?

Well, one thing oddly missing in Murray is any discussion of that traditional indicator of social breakdown, teenage pregnancy. You can see why — because it has actually been falling like a stone:

So, is economic stagnation really the result of less church going? I doubt it.

Jonathan Chait takes on another right wing lie.  That’s the one about how the job creators pay so much in taxes they are really down trodden billionaires!  Veronique de Rugy doesn’t stand a chance.

De Rugy wrote a column centered around the claim that the United States has a more progressive tax system than any other advanced country, and as her sole piece of evidence cited the fact that rich people pay a higher share of the tax burden in the U.S. than in other countries. I wrote a response, noting that this reasoning is completely idiotic. Rich Americans pay a bigger share of the tax burden because they earn a bigger share of the income, not because the U.S. tax code is more progressive.

De Rugy’s reply is an incoherent collection of hand-waving that does not come close to addressing this very simple and fatal flaw with her claim. She introduces a series of other fallacies, like conflating the marginal tax rate (the percentage tax you pay on your last dollar) with the total tax rate (the overall percentage of your income paid in tax), using “income tax” as a stand-in for total taxes, and trying to broaden the debate into a bigger philosophical dispute. But it’s not a philosophical dispute. It’s a simple case of her making up false claims based on extremely elementary errors.

And this is why I am forced to be so mean. There are just a lot of people out there exerting significant influence over the political debate who are totally unqualified. The dilemma is especially acute in the political economic field, where wealthy right-wingers have pumped so much money to subsidize the field of pro-rich people polemics that the demand for competent defenders of letting rich people keep as much of their money as possible vastly outstrips the supply. Hence the intellectual marketplace for arguments that we should tax rich people less is glutted with hackery.

No discussion of reprehensible lies would be complete with out Santorum and without the numerous conspiracy theories and untruths told about the concerns of environmentalists.  Don’t you know, science professors just want to get rich so they make up shit about climate change and fracking?

Read the rest of this entry »

Zombies and Vultures and Pipelines, Oh My

Posted: February 5, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic Policy, Environment, Environmental Protection, ethics, Gulf Oil Spill, health hazard, K street, legislation, lobbyists, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Republican politics, science, toxic waste, Water | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

The zombies seem to be winning the war against the living.  We have zombie banks, zombie politicians [think Rick Perry], zombie policy—free market fundamentalism preached as an untried economic theory.

And now zombie pipelines.

Just when you thought the Keystone XL controversy had been put to rest [at least temporarily], its zombie presence lunges forward, reanimated for all to see.  Although I suspect supporters of this very bad idea are hoping the American public is not watching or if they are watching they will buy the swill on the non-existent benefits of a 1700-mile tar sands pipeline.

What am I talking about?

I found a disturbing inquiry [hattip to OEN] by Representative Henry Waxman to a Deborah Hohlt, who received $50,500 from the Great State of Indiana [that would be paid in state taxpayer monies] to lobby in DC on behalf of the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline.  Indiana’s Governor Mitch Daniels provided the rebuttal to the President’s SOTU address, in which he referred to the Administration’s decision to ‘postpone’ the pipeline’s construction as an ‘extremist’ policy.

As you might remember the Republican chorus on this subject has been jobs, jobs, jobs.  House Speaker Boehner has quoted 100,000 jobs at stake.  TransCanada has been all over the map with job estimates, the last, most creative quote coming in at 250,000 jobs.  Unfortunately, the numbers are at odds with the single independent analysis from Cornell Global Labor Institute, estimating the number at between 4000-6000 temporary jobs.  The steel for the pipeline?  Would be coming from India.  The cry that the pipeline would reduce our reliance on foreign oil?  The refined tar sands oil is contracted for export [80%] to South America and Europe.

The upsides are slim to none, considering the toxic, corrosive nature of tar sand oil, the sludge-like quality that requires pressure and heat to make a pipeline flow possible.  That also increases the risk of a leak and an environmental disaster.  Anyone who may question the heightened risk should check out the total mess in Michigan when over 800,000 gallons of tar sand oil spilled and contaminated 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River and surrounding properties.

And the reclamation?  These corporations should hang their heads in utter shame. If you want to be thoroughly disgusted check out the You Tube clip I provided in an earlier post.

But here’s the really curious thing.  The pipeline won’t be running through Indiana.  The pipeline will not be running close to Indiana’s borders. No Indiana facilitities will have access to the pipeline. In fact, it appears that Indiana does not stand to be impacted in anyway by the Keystone pipeline and yet Governor Daniels felt compelled to call President Obama an extremist for postponing the pipeline’s construction.  He was also willing to pay a $50,000+ [in state taxpayer money] to lobby for the Great State of Indiana in defense of the pipeline.

More curious still?  TransCanada has stated that the pipeline will ‘increase’ oil prices for Indiana and other Midwestern residents because the area is ‘oversupplied.’  Keystone’s successful construction [this is stated in TransCanada’s application] will ensure higher prices for Canadian crude.  By independent analysis costs will increase $6.55 per barrel in the Midwest and $3 per barrel everywhere else.   The Indiana Petroleum Council thinks this is a swell idea.

Which begs the question: Who does Governor Daniels work for?  His constituents or the oil companies?

So, it should not be any great surprise that a Senate group–laughably-called bi-partisan because it includes 1 Democrat, Joe Manchin from W. Va.–is reintroducing the Keystone proposal, pushing for immediate construction with or without the Administration’s approval.  The Senate committee is invoking the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which says Congress should have the power:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.

I love it when the Republicans start waving the Constitution. It’s a clear signal they’re up to no good. Did I mention that Koch Industries stands to make a killing on this project?

While reading Representative Waxman’s letter, I recalled something I’d read in Greg Palast’s book Vultures’ Picnic and found an accompanying and equally disturbing text online here and here.  To quote Palast:

Reserves are the measure of oil recoverable at a certain price. Raise the price, raise the reserve. Cut the price and the amount of oil in the ground drops. In other words, it’s a fool’s errand to measure the “amount of oil we have left.” It depends on the price.

Specifically, oil companies and oil-related financiers are not interested in expanding oil supplies to the world, particularly cheap oil supplies [because the days of cheap oil are over]. They’re interested in feeding the hunger for oil and controlling the price around the world with an iron fist.  The higher, the better.  The environment—air, water, soil–is not the concern.  Our health or that of our children is not the concern.  The bottom line—profit and power—is all that matters.  If nations collapse?  The Vultures are waiting to feast on the bones.

Sound harsh?  It shouldn’t.  Zombies and vultures are kissing cousins.  They’re coming ‘round for a friendly visit.  Again.

DOD Embraces the Green Giant While Keystone XL Looks Increasingly Unattractive

Posted: January 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Environment, Environmental Protection, Gulf Oil Spill, health hazard, toxic waste, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 9 Comments

Frankly, I was surprised by President Obama’s comments in his SOTU address about the Department of Defense’s solar program, a project that would not only provide energy to military installations but generate enough additional energy to supply ¾ million American households.

Well, lo and behold, this is not idle chatter.

Turns out ground has been broken on a 13.78-megawatt solar power system at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, CA.  The project is expected to provide over 30% of the facility’s annual energy requirement and save an estimated $13 million in costs over the next 20 years.  This is in keeping with a larger strategic plan to reduce the Defense Department’s reliance on foreign oil, shrink its annual $4 billion energy bill and ensure energy security in the event of a natural disaster or other unforeseen events [sounds ominous].

A year-long study indicated that of DOD’s huge landholdings in the Mojave and Colorado deserts, across which seven military bases in California were considered– Fort Irwin, China Lake, Chocolate Mountain, Edwards, Barstow, Twentynine Palms and El Centro—and two in Nevada [Creech and Nellis], 30,000 acres were deemed suitable acreage for solar production.  Future facilities could produce 7 gigawatts of electricity.  To put this in perspective that’s roughly equal to 7 nuclear power plants, sufficient to supply full electricity to the 5 California bases 30 times over, enough in excess to supply 780,000 California households.

This push for renewable energy use by the military has also been taken to the battlefield, namely Afghanistan.  Last year, the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines began operating with Ground Renewable Energy Networks, Solar Portable Alternative Communications Energy Systems, LED lighting systems, Solar Shades, and Solar Light Trailers.  In addition to reduced fuel savings, reports indicate that alternate energy use in remote locations decreases resupply convoy runs and subsequently the danger of IED attacks.  Lives saved is a definite plus.

But there’s more.  Army installations force-wide have implemented a 2020 goal of net-zero energy consumption, which means reducing energy consumption, and then producing power through renewable sources.

Kristine M. Kingery, director of the Army’s sustainability policy, said pilot installations in the program are “striving toward” goals the Army wants met by 2020.
 “With Net Zero, the idea is not just replace the energy with renewables,” Kingery said. “It’s the reduction, the repurposing, conservation and efficiency. Reduce usage, and replace what you are using with renewables.”

As the largest institutional energy consumer in the world, the Defense Department is providing a major infusion of funding for research and development and application of renewable energy projects, including advanced biofuels, the world’s largest rooftop solar project involving 127 bases, advanced fuel cells and advanced grid technology, just to name a few.

What I find remarkable about all this activity is how DOD’s push puts the Keystone pipeline controversy in an entirely different light.

As you may recall, the Republican objection to President Obama’s recent rejection of Keystone’s proposal was presumably all about jobs.  The numbers have been wildly overstated. The State Department, at best, estimated 5000-6000 temporary construction jobs created, not the 100,000 jobs Speaker Boehner recently cited. Or the 250,000 that TransCanada finally arrived at. But more importantly, claims have been made that the pipeline would help break our dependence on foreign oil.  This, too, has been proven patently false since the tar sand crude, once refined, had already been contracted for export to Latin America and Europe.  Even the material for the pipeline [primarily steel] was being supplied not by American suppliers but by India.

This a classic battle–the old vs. the new.  And who is leading the way?  The United States Military, an institution of conservative values, has taken the bull by the horns and said: Time to move on, boys.  The Era of Conservation and Renewable Energy is at hand.

There’s also the environmental impact of the pipeline, the danger of a leak, something pipeline supporters have openly mocked.  What is rarely mentioned is that tar sand oil requires heat and pressure to move the sludge-like material along its 1700-mile journey from the Alberta sand fields to Texan refineries.  Tar sand oil is toxic and very corrosive, making leaks far more likely.

What could happen?

Unfortunately, we’ve had a graphic example of exactly what could and did happen.  In Michigan, a tar sands leak, estimated at over 800,000 gallons, polluted 30 miles of the Kalamazoo River, July 2010.

And Quelle Surprise!  There was a resultant cover up.

Recall the Gulf of Mexico, BP and the environmental disaster of nightmarish proportions.

Then remember that the United States Military has clearly gotten the message and acted upon it: The Age of Fossil Fuel, the rush for Black Gold is coming to an end.  The way forward financially and security-wise is colored Green.

Which would you rather see–this?

Or this?

Personally?  I’ll take door number 2 and follow the generals into the future.

Monday Reads

Posted: September 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, American Jobs Act, Barack Obama, Cameroon, Democratic Politics, Economy, Environment, Environmental Protection, Foreign Affairs, India, morning reads, Reproductive Health, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Good Morning!

Fall is definitely in the air! This has to be the nicest September in New Orleans that I’ve ever experienced.  I’m told that a lot of this has to do with with the absence of both La Nina and El Nino.  I just know I’m seeing weather I usually can expect in October and I like it!

I’m going to start the morning reads off with Paul Krugman and his NYT blog thread  “Hysteresis Begins”.  I continue to see signs of recession and it worries me greatly.  Our economy is certainly not on the mend in any sense of the word. Krugman continues to put into words exactly what I’ve been feeling.

The slump in the United States and other advanced economies is the result of a failure of demand — period, end of story. All attempts to claim that it is somehow structural, or maybe the result of reduced incentives to produce, have collapsed at first contact with the evidence.

But there is a real concern that if the slump goes on long enough, it can turn into a supply-side problem, because investment will be depressed, reducing future capacity, and because workers who have been unemployed for a long time become unemployable. This is the issue of hysteria “hysteresis”.

And if you look at manufacturing capacity, in particular, you can already see that starting to happen.

I have no idea why this meme has taken hold that it’s lack of confidence because of Obama, lottsa obscure regulations, or high taxes that are causing the current slump.  It is definitely none of the above.  Businesses do not have customers. Customers do not have incomes or jobs or job security.  It’s a demand thing!  What on earth do economists have to do to get policy maker’s attention these days?  I suppose I could answer that.  We’d all have to become corporations, hire lobbyists, and donate to some one’s political campaign.

Rep Emmanuel Cleaver gets it.  The black caucus sees the incredible unemployment in the community and understands.  Yet, they feel hamstrung to try to do anything about it.  That’s a damned shame in my book.

Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).

“If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Cleaver told “The Miami Herald” in comments published Sunday. “There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.”

CBC members have expressed concern in recent months as the unemployment rate has continued to rise amongst African-Americans, pushing for Obama to do more to address the needs of vulnerable communities.

“We’re supportive of the president, but we getting tired, y’all,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said in August. “We want to give [Obama] every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don’t know what the strategy is.”

The biggest problem is that no one but a few advisers seem to be able to get these points across to the White House.  They seem intent on pandering to independents who–as yet–appear unmoved.  They’re losing the base and the center.  Why can’t they just do the right thing?  Just to reinforce the it’s a demand problem idea, here’s the same thought from the chairman of Google who is pushing for more stimulus.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt called on Washington to think big about solutions for the nation’s struggling economy calling the current emphasis on cutting spending instead of new stimulus “ludicrous.”

The economy would need “not just something like the jobs bill, but also significant government stimulation in terms of buying power and investment,” said Schmidt on ABC”s “This Week” on Sunday.

“Otherwise, we are set up for years of extraordinarily low growth in the economy and no real solution to the jobless problem,” he warned.

“The current strategy is ludicrous. You have a situation where the private sector sees essentially no growth in demand. The classic solution is to have the government step in and, with short-term initiatives, help stimulate that demand. If they do it right, they’ll invest in income and growth producing things like highways and bridges and schools, new opportunities for the private sector to go then build businesses,” proposed Schmidt.

So, I’m getting really disgusted at state of US policy these days; especially the continued attack on women’s rights.   I’m going to focus on some good news about women around the world.  Have you ever heard of breast ironing?  This is a practice in Cameroon and here are some ‘aunties’ that are educating some mothers in the country.  The practice is actually done when mothers are concerned their daughters are maturing sexually too early which could subject them to becoming child brides.

Aside from causing burns and permanent deformity this practice also leaves deep psychological scars.

“After (I) have it done, apart from the pain, I felt very, very ashamed. I was ashamed of myself,” said Forghab. “I thought, if my parents are ironing my breasts at that age it means that I am not supposed to have them.”

Despite a daughters’ tears and pleas to stop, mothers continue to perform this practice on their daughters assuring. “It is for their own good,” many mothers say.

But what good? What could possibly be worth justifying such a harmful intervention? Breast ironing is a traditional practice that currently affects about 25 percent of all girls in Cameroon.

More commonly performed in the rural areas than in cities, “breast ironing has existed as long as Cameroon,” says Dr. Sinou Tchana, a Cameroon gynecologist and vice-president of the Cameroonian Association of Female Doctors.

It can seem shocking that mothers, the same mothers who are supposed to love and care for their children, are also the ones hurting them the most by burning their body. But many mothers who still practice breast ironing are hoping to prevent their daughters from getting pregnant at a ‘too-early’ age. What starts as an attempt to protect often leaves girls injured and confused.

“While the minimum legal age for a woman to marry is 15, many families facilitated the marriage of young girls by the age of 12. Early marriage was prevalent in the northern regions of Adamaoua, North, and particularly the remote
Far North, where many girls as young as nine faced severe health risks from pregnancies,” says the U.S. Department of State in a new report on Cameroon.

The good news is that women are taking it on themselves to go around the country to teach women their are other ways to protect their young girls.  Please read the article it’s very interesting and I think you’ll love the Women’s News site where I found it!  Also,  here’s some information on the Self-Employed Women’s Association in India. SEWA has been registered as a trade union since 1972 and works for the right of poor, self-employed women. It’s doing wonderful things over there and I thought you may want to check it out.

Some of the most exciting recent  initiatives for SEWA have been the promotion of green livelihoods.  SEWA earned an award from the Sierra Club for its work.  Here’s some information on what they have done to promote women and environmental sustainability.

More than 60% of SEWA’s membership comes from the rural areas and are poorest of the poor from the most disaster prone areas. Thses women consume less oil and coal based energy, recycle many many items in their daily life, productively reuse solid waste when possible and are eager to use, produce, and manage green technology such on solar lamps.

The many benefits of combining new, green technologies with traditional farming techniques are evident in the success of SEWA’s campaign. Through green Energy and Green livelihood initiative 139,665 members earn average annual total income of Rs.1,175 million. Further SEWA’s effort in this area has not only lead towards green livelihoods but have also worked towards mitigating the effects of climate change. “While the rest of the world talks and negotiates, we the poor women of India cut down carbon emission,” said Reema. “We have learned this power of small concrete act by many from Gandhiji,” she added.

To this end, SEWA has trained 3685 barefoot technician women in water conservation, construction, repairs and deepening of water structure, nursery raising, solid waste recycle, fodder growing, vermicompost production, building eco-friendly rural infrastructures, solar lamp production, developing eco-friendly energy sources, garment production with eco-friendly fabrics and natural dyes, green livelihoods focusing on food security and other environmentally friendly and economically beneficial activities. Demand for such training is ten fold.

Biomass, which was earlier burnt, is now being used as a source of organic manure. More than 13 lakh farmer families have been benefited from these eco-friendly campaigns, 26 Lakh hectares of land are brought under organic cultivation and 2018924 trees have been successfully planted and maintained.

Through these Green Energy and Livelihood Initiatives, SEWA has been at the forefront in promoting green energy and generating green livelihoods in villages.

“If poor and women can take leaps towards green and clean economy the others have excuse to be inactive. May we invite all Indians, and also all Americans, today to catch up?” Reema requested.

Beverly Gage–a history professor at Yale University–wrote an interesting piece in the NYT this weekend called “The Unacknowledged Victories of the American Left” in a book review of Michael Kazin’s “American Dreamers. There’s really not much of a left wing left in the US today, but what is left does have a proud history.

“American Dreamers” is Kazin’s bid to reclaim the left’s utopian spirit for an age of diminished expectations. An editor at Dissent magazine and one of the left’s most eloquent spokesmen, Kazin presents his book as an unapologetic attempt to give the left a history it can celebrate. For more than two centuries, he writes, American radicals have sounded the alarm about crucial injustices — slavery, industrial exploitation, women’s oppression — that the rest of society refused to see. It is time for the left to stand up and take credit for these efforts.

Who is — or was — “the left”? Today, many Americans use the word interchangeably with “liberal.” As Kazin points out, this would have been anathema to earlier generations, when leftists and liberals often viewed each other as ideological foes. For most of the 20th century, liberalism meant tinkering, finding a kinder and gentler way to preserve the status quo. Leftists, by contrast, put their faith in structural change. Kazin’s left includes all those who fought for a “radically egalitarian transformation of society,” from abolitionists to Communists to the modern feminist and gay rights movements.

By far the most important of the early movements was abolition, and abolitionists linger throughout the book as Kazin’s archetypal leftists, prophets and dreamers who saw an injustice and fought to correct it despite the blindness and hostility of the larger society. The best among them practiced what they preached, forming interracial cooperatives and marrying across color lines. They also suffered for their ideals, enduring violence, social ostracism and, in some cases, death. In the end, they were vindicated by history, the ideals that they championed finally inscribed as the nation’s conventional wisdom.

There’s also a fascinating article up at Spiegel On line on the work German scientists are doing on computers studying differences between Neanderthals and modern humans that is worth a look.  Here’s more information on ongoing work to determine what was going on back during the time when Neanderthals still walked the earth.

Last year’s decoding of the Neanderthal’s genetic makeup provided strong evidence in support of this thesis. Researchers working under Svante Pääbo, the director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that modern Eurasians inherited a small portion of their DNA sequence from Neanderthals . This suggests that the two species of man must have had sexual intercourse.

What’s more, the genetic researchers were also able to narrow down the timeframe of this momentous genetic intermingling. According to their findings, the intercourse took place between 65,000 and 90,000 years after modern man set foot on the Eurasian landmass, presumably on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean.

Scientists are now trying to determine the exact relationship the inhabitants of these Israeli caves had with the forefathers of modern-day Eurasians. In particular, they are examining the fossil remains to see if there are traces of the interaction between the two species.

Okay, so I tried to throw in a little interesting news along with the general economic and political malaise items. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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