Liberal Voices

Carbon Path

Five years ago, 86% of global energy production centered on coal, natural gas and petroleum. The bulk of the remaining 14% is nuclear energy at 8% and a miniscule 6% effort for all others, including solar, biomass, geothermal and wind. In the past five years, little has changed.

The US has 25% of global coal reserves. Accordingly, we are still blowing off the tops of mountains in Appalachia, never mind the toxic sediment finding its way into Appalachian streams. After all, we need it for our electric generating plants, over 50% powered by coal.

Natural gas consumption is rising but it never can be a permanent substitute for petroleum in the transportation sector. Transport (pipelines/LNG) of natural gas requires the building of such resources which are not economic for a short-term solution.

Petroleum has reached peak production, a condition hastened by ever-present US demand, but burgeoning demand from Asian countries like China, India, South Korea, and Japan has put us over the top. Unlike 1973’s oil crisis, this peak is permanent

It is curious that crude oil deposits have taken between 50 to 300 million years to form, and yet we have managed to burn roughly half of all global oil reserves in merely 125 years. However, when you consider the rate of consumption now, 85 million barrels of oil used per day (MBD), we will have perhaps five years before economic travail is evident. With a usage curve predicting 130 MBD within 10 years, how long before it shuts down our way of life, pushing up oil prices beyond affordability.

Many conservatives would dispute the peak oil claim. So we should make it clear that the world is not running out of oil itself, but rather its ability to produce high-quality, cheap and economically extractable oil on demand. Thus Peak Oil is the point where world production has peaked due to reduced access of economically extractable oil.

So once you add global warming to Peak Oil, human beings could be headed for EndTimes, the language of the religious right.

At any rate, the problem is urgent.

While the 1970s gave us a scare about the dwindling supply of oil and our foreign dependence, we have had a succession of leaders who failed as our stewards.  But with global warming evidence mounting and with Middle East tension increasing, the cry for breaking our oil addiction has grown over the last decade, especially among prudent scientists.

But a Congress, immune to long-range planning or even a modicum of visionary thinking, has ignored the clarion call. First the Gingrich Congress, ideologically bound to the past, managed little progress on anything other than trying to hang Bill Clinton.

In 2001 when the Bush administration entered office, Dick Cheney and the energy industry rewrote energy policy behind closed doors, setting progress back for a decade.

Next, after a Republican majority rubberstamped a Bush-Cheney carbon-energy-fest, a 2006 Democrat majority cowered and cringed under Republican intimidation. Only now with the Obama administration and a clear majority, are Democrats in Congress beginning to heed warnings about climate change.

But with a nation’s financial back broken with outlandish military spending and deep recession,  the Democrat majority, many who participated in that rapacious spending spree, are still loathe to find money for promoting new energy technologies.

We have heard the favorite strategy of conservatives — more supply. If we opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and began full production years into the future, we might find enough to provide one million barrels a day for 30 years. This would delay the oil crisis a few months and lead to a continuing high-carbon road.

Another false prophet for many is modern technology. Reason should tell us it is not a magic bullet, but is hardware and programming for running fossil fuels. It depends on an abundant underlying fossil fuel base.

For decades, we have had only two realistic strategies: increase the fuel economy of our vehicles and find one or more alternative fuel sources that are abundant, low carbon, and affordable. Both have been strongly fought by conservatives for a long time.

Even if we increase fuel economy for cars and SUVs to 60 miles per gallon by 2030, we would still need half their fuel to be zero carbon. One alternative fuel is even remotely plausible – carbon-free electricity.

That is why the focus is on hybrids and electric cars.

Meanwhile, the media is only posturing, talking of switching to energy-saving light bulbs and turning off lights. It doesn’t want to rouse us out of our comfort zone. The daily priority of media ratings takes long-range survival off its radar.

Leaders must know that we need to choose a new path now or one will be forced upon us, a path that could well lead to war, hunger, drought, and dislocation. Not acting would be foolhardy, whether through self-delusion, greed, or ideology.

By all evidence, our leaders still lack the courage to responsibly direct us, but then again we lack the perception and the focus to force it upon them.

Independence and Remembrance

On this Fourth of July, Obama’s campaign words of promise echo in my ears: “breaking the power of the lobbyists, providing affordable health care for all, cutting middle-class taxes, ending both the Iraqi war and our dependence on foreign oil, and uniting us.”

Like many, I wanted to believe, and our critical times seemed to provide more surety. At any rate, I thought that these herculean tasks could be completed by the man from the planet Krypton – incidentally, that is why unimaginative neo-cons can’t find his birth record.

But we are finding that Bush policy and Bush words of the past eight years still bring command and privilege to the business elite.

George Bush’s “us and them” chant, the Bush cowboy embrace of the corporate elite, and his hardy litany of “fighting for freedom” are big items in the neo-conservative culture. The money and resource commitment for these ideals are still embodied in a monolithic corporate plan, and thus a still-not-dead right-wing ideology continues to guide government decision-making.

Obama has spoken against the polarity of “us or them” in offshore forums, but evidence shows that he too embraces at least the Wall Street elite. And we are still fighting – and dying -- in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Accordingly, I contend that the overwhelming power of huge corporations and their financial stake in the current economic and political endeavors still stymies President Obama, and certainly curtails the willingness of Congress, to move ahead progressively.

In spite of the Obama promise of change, we are still in Iraq for at least two more years, he has seemingly caved in to Wall Street, health care reform will probably go down the familiar yellow brick road of heartless, for-profit health care, and we still have Guantanamo, the symbol of torture.

Obama’s stimulus package (indulged with much pork) did provide a modicum of economic forward thrust. His budget is greener but it funds an even fatter military. What does it mean? It means that our children and our grandchildren will continue to pay for unneeded spending.

There is still the Iraqi war at $9 billion a month, we still have unneeded military spending -- even some unwanted by the Pentagon. One unneeded, and still unworkable, program is the missile defense system ($63 billion during the last 7 years). We still have huge subsidies for business.

When I last looked, tax breaks for the rich (tens of billions) are still with us. We still continue to hire mercenaries for the military and government service. And never was KMR held accountable for its faulty work in Iraq, some of which electrocuted American servicemen – 13 dead since 2003.

Normally we might say that change doesn’t come overnight and that we should have patience. But I’m not so sure we have time to be patient, especially with early indications that Obama actions – or maybe, inactions -- are not allaying critical needs, and that his stimulus package is not enough.

The wolf is at our doorstep! Unemployment is rising. Americans are starting to lose faith. Furthermore, foreign creditors are worried about the dollar. While compromised Democrats deliberate, Republican mongrels, like neo-con stooges, are nipping at their heels.

The conditions that are with us today began five decades ago.

Fifty years ago in his Farewell Address, President Eisenhower warned us about the power of the “military-industrial complex,” a dominant combination of industrial giants and military institutions that benefit from war.

At the time, the US accounted for 47% of the world’s arms expenditure. It was after a world war and at the beginning of the cold war with the Soviet Union. In spite of the end of the cold war in 2009, America still accounts for almost 50% of global military expenditures, and we can less afford it today.

After WWII, Americans were saving at an 8-10 % clip. By 1985 it began declining until by 2000 savings was negative. Actually in the 1980s, Americans started consuming with abandon, discarding age-old values of thrift. By the 1950s, we had begun to adopt a “continuous war” footing, starting with the dawn of what we called the cold war with the Soviet Union.

Later, Reagan policies promoted uncontrolled military spending and at the same time, hypocritically derided big government, this while he used government for huge deficit spending, deficits augmented by Reagan’s $200 billion tax cut for the rich. It was said that there wasn’t a weapon system he didn’t like.

He was one of the first Republican presidents to abandon thrift, hiking military spending till the Soviet Union cried uncle. With a short respite from Clinton’s balanced budget, our cry for Uncle Sam to stop the spending was profligately ignored by another Republican, George W. Bush.

We have no time left to placate the members of the plutocracy that a compromised Congress and misguided administrations helped to build over the years and to whom George W. Bush gave the keys to the national vault.

We must spend only for investments – capital and human. Only this type of spending will make us strong again: more productive workers and more vital industries for a future most of us won’t see under our current culture.

The unfortunate truth is that President Obama and our Democrats in Congress don’t have time to balance their political needs against real national needs. Though many Democrats are thick with self-interest, Republicans seem to show no glimmer of recognizing a national need.

The world is in deep recession, the dollar is beleaguered, and our way of life could easily crumble. As President Obama once said, we need to put away childish things – in essence, get serious about our country.

He could heed his own advice.

News: the Quick or the Undead

Portrayal of real life events in the media imitates B movie productions. In fact, the American corporate media, to a varying extent, dictates that news must be a production that entertains with low-level theatrics, thereby giving a measure of patron satisfaction – like the satisfaction coming from a consumer purchase.

Providing a model for news programs, entertainment media portrays a profusion of conflict and drama exhibits: vampires, zombies, sex, avarice, violence -- and reality television uses most of these phenomena. Real news, perhaps, is a form of reality television with the political fare accepting lies, distortion and exaggeration.

Each news network has its own form of drama with tactics and techniques they utilize for higher ratings.

Vampire-ish, Fox news sucks the blood out of its audience, giving blame relief for the pain of resentment and anger, creating a following that won’t die, but will depend on Fox for its life blood. The good news is that the effects needn’t be permanent.

Fox’s most notable subject category is politics and ideology.

And it has tools for this endeavor. It can place a screen pointer showing Fox’s predetermined villain and its captions can spell-out the derision for its villain’s image and actions. The production can launch a laugh track or a Beck/Hannity/O’Neill (take your pick) mocking chant when Fox’s subject of ridicule is shown.

The last production I saw was Vice President Joe Biden giving a speech. It was like a high school mock drama with pointers and captions.

If you gather Fox talking heads together like a collage into their varied news chatter poses, the scene would resemble a vampire colony rally, dissing, hissing, and deriding their human targets – progressives, with living shells.

The Fox News crew invites the audience to bare its vamp-fangs too – pointing scornfully at the enemy, mouthing its own mocking epithets to the screen, and launching sarcasm. However, Sarah-Palin-style winks are considered too subtle.

Other news show approaches emphasize sex, greed and violence. They have surreal simulations in their grab-bag of tricks: stimulate wonder, emphasize conflict and rancor, feature events emitting horror, portray the outrageous, but most of all, its spectacle must draw the attention of a seemingly narcissistic audience that expects action, shallowness and ingratiation. This audience still has its living shell.

Thanks to the spectacle media news, Newt Gingrich now represents the political opposition, apparently thought to be a worthy opponent to the Obama administration and to the Democrats in Congress. Having no credible, melodrama-esque Republican, Newt became the opposition’s undead (for he was politically dead and the media brought him back to life, deeming him relevant).

The news media also has Rush Limbaugh – representing not a zombie, not a vampire, perhaps, more like a jackal, though not the Disney variety. The problem with Rush, though, is his credibility. After all, he makes hundreds of millions of dollars taking cheap shots at anything he deems progressive or liberal. So he coughs up effluents that millions of his watchers see as relevancy in their lives. His audience also lives, but with no erasure.

John McCain is not quite as malleable as the others. He might actually say something objective or reasonable, something a thinking person might say. He simply doesn’t follow scripts.

His former running mate, Sarah Palin, is more useful. She is more predictably negative toward anything progressive and will provide conflict and rancor, ingredients needed for any marketable media form.

Michael Steele, RNC Chairman, does provide some curiosity to Republican leadership but his apology to Rush Limbaugh for a Rush-deemed offensive remark made Steele look like a “namby-pamby.”

Dick Cheney, having a media omnipresence of late, suffers from overexposure and under-favor.

And the Democrats are no fun because they want to bellyache about “negative Republicans,” but still cringe and squirm rather than fight Republican attacks – lame or not.

So Newt is the current media choice. His superficiality, forgotten, the media can market his confrontational but soap-opera ways. For example, his contract with America was more like a conflict with America. He disparaged Clinton’s morality while discarding a cancer-stricken wife.

His natural disdainful manner toward his enemies seems to be the Republican mantra that the media currently wants to succeed the Bush-Rove model.

So until something better comes along, the media’s casting, you might even say typecasting, is complete, at least in the political arena, composed of irresolute Democrats and belligerent Republicans.

Parts for other drama categories is more a matter of selection, after the news net is cast.

Others are planning our demise!

Not many Americans are aware of the important financial meeting that took place a few days ago in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The six-nation Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, composed of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, met to discuss trade and currencies. Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia were invited to observe, but, notably, not the US.

The news of this meeting was almost completely ignored by the American media. The subject discussed – though having a possibly grave impact on us – must have been deemed too esoteric for Americans to grapple with, or the topic cannot be reduced to the entertainment standards of radio or television news. In other words, currencies, exchange rates and foreign trade cannot be made sexy or alluring.

It all underscores the fact that Americans, including the media, business, and our leadership, choose to be clueless about our standing in the world community and its long-term potential for decline.

To Congress and corporations, long-term is the next election or the next board meeting. For the President, it’s the next photo op. For average Americans, it’s the next credit card payment.

In effect, the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, and Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, along with the four other members, were discussing the military and financial demise of the United States – at least the ultimate demise.

Strong words? Well, yes.

Why did the attendees feel the need to assure us – at least, our diplomats -- that dismantling the US financial and military hegemony is not their aim?

Let’s put the situation in their perspective.

Would you give your deadbeat brother-in-law  – contractually a brother through a union of foreign trade – unlimited loans so he could build weapons that might be used against you, so that he can live high on the hog, so that he can give his vulture executive friends tax breaks paid for by your children, and so that he can export pollution from his plants – just to name a few annoying habits the arrogant brother, America, has.

China and Russia – and perhaps India, Pakistan and Iran – are saying no. They want to receive their own currency in payment when they sell goods and hopefully pay in reserve dollars when they buy, ridding themselves of the billions of dollars in American currency they now hold.

They don’t want the dollar to be the global reserve currency any more. Against the yuan, the yen and other Asian currencies, it is overvalued -- through Asian mercantile efforts, we might add. For Asians, and others, receiving their own currencies in payment assures a higher value for their exports.

Don’t kid yourself that other countries, including the Japanese and the South Koreans – both holding billions of dollars of American debt instruments, Japan alone holds almost $700 billion -- are still our friends. Friends are built on mutual respect. Respect is earned from achievement, self-reliance and humility.  No one loves a has-been.

When our solvency depends on Russia, Brazil, Japan, China, Caribbean bankers, oil exporters and South Korean (combined holding over $2 trillion of our debt—and rising), there is no equal footing for friendship. It’s business.

In the past, the dollar provided a strong reserve, but now the country that issues it exudes no confidence, even among strong allies. Many countries want a “currency” divorce.

Why else did the Chinese prime minister seek assurance from President Obama that the almost trillion dollars of credit his country gives will have continuing value? Why is Russia making exclusive natural gas and oil deals with foreign suppliers.

The world is no longer our oyster!

Let’s face it. Our military strength depends on economic strength. We won WWII because of our resources, a far-sighted, feisty leadership, a highly-skilled workforce, a creative independence, a stubborn independence, and a strong productive economy.

Which of these do we still have?

How much of a basic resource, oil, do we import? What leaders are farsighted, perhaps only a few. And where is our highly skilled workforce and an education system to meet this need? Are we dependent on other countries for our livelihood? And how much of our productive capability is left after out-sourcing and bankruptcies?

In spite of the Bush “Dark Ages,” there are some signs of resurgence. Obama’s stimulus package has provided research funds for our schools, to adopt regional education ideas that work. Another plus is the creative independence among scientists and humanities, although some erosion has occurred due to plutocratic influences.

Bio-refinery projects funded by the Obama stimulus bill could signal forward-looking domestic production of what is called grassoline, an environmentally-friendly way to break the cycle of dependence on foreign oil, using domestically produced gasoline made from inedible parts of plants. This is no joke: it is a Scientific American report.

Though cooperation is still possible, other countries will look after their own interests, and we must look after our own.

Other nations are planning our demise. Isn’t it time for us to act?

Rile and Rancor

In April, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a report warning that the current economic and political landscape is creating dangerously ripe conditions for the resurgence of rightwing extremism. It paints images of groups, movements, and adherents primarily hate-driven (against religions, ethnic, and racial groups) or just anti-government, pointedly the federal government.

The DHS cited the economic downturn and the election of the first African American president as drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.

With their outspoken – and quite defensive -- stance against the DHS report, some conservative leaders have vocally identified themselves with extremism, even though it is a report which said nothing about conservatives.

The House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) called it “offensive. Gun advocate, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) claimed “the report has no intelligence value and only serves to blur our constitutional protections, such as the 2^nd Amendment.”  Barton (R-TX) said “they are calling us extremists.” And, of course Fox News also had its spurious comments.

Indeed while right-wing voices debunked the report, the recent surge of extremist violence seems to support the DHS warning about extremist attacks:

• The July 2008 shooting spree in a Knoxville church occurred because the shooter “hated the liberal movement.” Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity were on his reading list.
• A thwarted attempt to assassinate Obama and target 102 black people (shoot 88 and decapitate 14: symbolic numbers for white supremacists) in Tennessee happened last October and was planned by two neo-Nazi skinheads.
• Keith Luke, a 22 year-old white supremacist, is accused of killing two, raping four, and attempting six other murders one day after Obama was inaugurated. He frequented white supremacist websites like PodBlanc.
• An abortion doctor, George Tiller, was murdered in May by a white supremacist.
• Last month, Richard Poplawski killed three police officers, a young man convinced the nation is secretly controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the citizenry.
• A few days ago, a man in his late 80s with ties to white supremacist organizations opened fire inside the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., hitting two people, including a black security guard.

If you think that what is coined as domestic terrorism is a natural occurrence in a free society, you are wrong. But it can be used as a weapon by politicians to gain votes. Though rightwing violence is not their goal, one could easily argue that neo-conservatives have adopted the tactic of division and discord to sway voters, even though its byproducts could well be rightwing violence, especially given our political and economic conditions.

The ugly truth is that certain twisted groups prefer to exploit perverse human emotions for their own purposes, whether it’s radio or TV for ratings, racist pursuits, a twisted ideology, exercising greed, venting vendettas or just a measure of meanness. Yes, these twisted groups include politicians, talk-show hosts, hate-mongers, or just the misguided.

Neo-conservatives ruthlessly pursued the destruction of Bill Clinton in the 90s, using character assassination, lies and propaganda. During the Bush era, these practices have tilted close elections toward Republicans, providing some measure of success.

It is no coincidence that the anti-liberal Knoxville church shooter was a fan of Bill O’Reilly and Shawn Hannity. Both are known for their scathing, emotion-kindling, and liberal-deriding attacks on anything progressive. 

In our recent memory are images of Sarah Palin goading crowds into frenzy over her charges that Barack Obama palled around with domestic terrorists. Her partner in the presidential election, John McCain, painted Obama as reprehensible, while crowds hooted and chanted against Obama.

Current Republican leaders and the doughboy radical, Rush Limbaugh, often deride and denigrate President Obama and anything progressive in mean-spirited and nasty ways.

Tune into right-wing talk radio and you can hear radical talking heads declaring that Obama and the Democrats will take guns away or imprison your bodies like a socialist dictator. Many Republican politicians imply as much. They are messages that will inflame the already deranged, the downtrodden, or those who are just vulnerable.

In case you think that any part of these messages has had no impact: the FBI says that since November more than seven million people applied for criminal background checks in order to buy weapons. This figure doesn’t count the many more buying at thousands of gun shows in states such as Virginia, without facing any checks.

Some – pushed over the edge -- take to killing sprees.

The baser emotions of fear, hatred, resentment and loathing have been exploited since time immemorial. A willing media helps to spread the venom.

Built into rightwing media tactics and the inflammatory conservative political attacks is fear. Resulting violence reinforces this fear for all of us, especially the liberal victims.

The fear tactics and its feedback could be designed to embroil us in a never-ending cycle, leading to more rightwing conservatives being chosen as leaders by a fearful populace.

You might very well ask yourself if that is where we want to go as Americans.

If not, we can boycott spurious media chatter: unchallenged lies, character assassination, and fear-mongering tactics used by right-wing voices. Included are political leaders, talk show mercenaries who jack up ratings with rancor, and spectacle news hosts like O’Reilly, Beck, and Hannity.